Nicobulus Against Pantaenetus (21-25)

Well then, that he released me from all claims, when I sold the slaves to him, I have proved to you; and that the laws do not allow suits to be brought in such cases you have heard from the law which has just been read. However, that no one of you, men of Athens, may suppose that it is because I am at a disadvantage regarding the rights of the matters at issue that I have recourse to this special plea, I propose to show you that in every one of his charges against me his statements are false.

Read the complaint itself, which he brings against me.

The Complaint

Nicobulus has harmed me by laying a plot against me and against my property, having ordered Antigenes, his slave, to take away from my slave the silver which he was bringing to be paid to the state for the mining property which I bought for ninety minae,[*] and having also caused me to be inscribed as debtor to the treasury for double that amount.

Stop reading. All these charges which he has now lodged against me he previously made against Evergus, and won his suit. Now evidence has been brought before you in the opening of my speech that I was not in the country when these men quarrelled with one another; but the fact is clear from the complaint itself. For he nowhere stated that I have done any of these things, but, suggesting that I laid a plot against him and against his property, he declares that I ordered my slave to commit these acts; and in this he lies. For how could I have given this order, seeing that at the time I set sail I could by no possibility have had knowledge of what was going to happen here?

And then how absurd when he says that I plotted to disenfranchise him and bring him to utter ruin, to have written in the charge that I ordered a slave to do this,—a thing which even a citizen could not do to another citizen.[*] What, then, is the meaning of this? I suppose that, being unable to refer to me the doing of any of these acts, but wishing to go on with his malicious suit, he wrote in the complaint that I had given the order. There was no sense in his charge, if he had not done this.

Read what follows.

The Complaint

And after I had become a debtor to the state, having stationed his slave Antigenes in my mining property at Thrasyllus,[*] in full control of my works, although I forbade him ⋯

Stop reading. In all this he will again be convicted of falsehood by the facts themselves; for he has written in the complaint that I stationed the slave and that he forbade me. But this was impossible in the case of one who was not in the country. Neither did I station anyone, seeing that I was in Pontus, nor did he forbid a man who was not in Athens. How could he?