Unknown Pleader Against Evergus and Mnesibulus, About False Testimony (21-25)

When this decree had been passed, the magistrates chose by lot those who owed the ship’s equipment to the state and handed over their names, and the overseers of the dockyards passed on the list to the trierarchs who were then about to sail, and to the overseers of the navy-boards. The law of Periander[*] forced us and laid command upon us to receive the list of those who owed equipment to the state,—I mean the law in accordance with which the navy-boards were constituted. And besides this another decree of the people compelled them to assign to us the several debtors that we might recover from each man his proportionate amount.

Now I, as it happened, was a trierarch and overseer of the navy-board, and Demochares of Paeania[*] was in the navy-board, and was indebted to the state for the equipment of a ship in conjunction with Theophemus here, for he had served as joint trierarch with him. Both their names, then, had been inscribed on the stelê as indebted to the state for the ship’s equipment, and the magistrates, receiving their names from those in office before them, gave them over to us in accordance with the law and the decrees.

It was therefore a matter of necessity for us to receive them. I must tell you that hitherto, although I had often served as your trierarch, I had never taken equipment from the dockyards, but had supplied it at my own private expense whenever need arose, in order that I might have as little trouble as possible with the state. On this occasion, however, I was compelled to take over the names in accordance with the decrees and the law.

To prove that I am speaking the truth in this, I shall produce as witnesses supporting these facts, the decree and the law, next the magistrate who gave the names over to me and who brought the case into court, and finally the members of the navy-board in which I was overseer and trierarch.

(To the clerk.) Read, please.

The Law. The Decree. The Depositions

That it was absolutely necessary, therefore, for me to take over the names of those indebted to the state, you have heard from the law and the decrees; and that I took them over from the magistrate, the one who delivered them to me has testified. So, then, the first question for you to consider at the outset, men of the jury, is this, whether the wrongdoer was I, who was compelled to recover from Theophemus what he owed, or Theophemus, who had long owed the equipment to the state and refused to give it back.