Apollodorus Against Stephanus, Charged with False Testimony I (81-85)

And yet, by the gods, if I had led you off to prison as a thief caught in the act, piling upon your back—if this had been in any way possible—the wealth which you now possess, and had then demanded of you, if you denied having got this wealth by thievery, to refer me to the source from which you got it, to whom would you have referred me? Your father did not give it to you; you did not find it; you had not got it from some other source when you come into our family; for you were a barbarian when you were purchased. Have you, then, a man who ought to have been publicly put to death for what you have done, after saving your skin, after securing for yourself a city with our money, and after being allowed to beget children as brothers to your own masters—have you entered a special plea that our action for the sums claimed from you is inadmissible?

And, then, did you speak evil of me, and inquire what manner of man my father was? Men of Athens, who would not have been indignant at this? For my part, though it beseem me to have less of pride than any of you, yet I judge that I may at least have more than Phormio, while as for him, though there be no one else than whom he should have less, yet he should have less than I; for, assuming that we are the sort of people your words made us out to be, you, Phormio, were none the less our slave.

There is perhaps something else which one of them may say: that Pasicles, although he is my brother, makes no charge against Phormio for these same actions. Well, I will speak about Pasicles, too, men of Athens, though I beg and implore you to pardon me, if I am so carried away by indignation at the outrages I have received from my own slaves as to be unable to restrain myself; I will not keep silent, but will declare what until now I pretended not to hear when others said it;—

I consider Pasicles to be my brother on my mother’s side, but whether on my father’s side also, I do not know; but I am afraid that the wrongs which Phormio has done us began with Pasicles. For when he joins in pleading the cause of the slave and dishonors his brother, when he fawns upon those, and curries the favor of those, who ought to seek his favor, to what suspicion does this naturally give rise? Away, then, with Pasicles, and let him be called your son instead of your master, and my adversary (since he so chooses) instead of my brother.

I bid adieu to this fellow and appeal to those to whom my father left me as my helpers and friends—to you, men of the jury. And I beg and entreat and implore you, do not suffer my daughters and myself through our poverty to become a source of malicious joy to my own slaves and to his flatterers. My father gave you a thousand shields and made himself serviceable to you in many ways, and five times served as trierarch, voluntarily equipping the ships and manning them at his own expense. I remind you of this, not because I consider that you are under obligation to me—for it is I that am under obligation to you,—but in order that I may not suffer unworthy treatment without your knowing it. For that would not be a credit to you any more than to me.