Unknown Pleader Against Evergus and Mnesibulus, About False Testimony (26-30)

For if you look at each matter severally, you will find that Theophemus was wholly in the wrong, and that this is not merely a statement of mine but a fact decided by vote of the senate and the court. For when I had received his name from the magistrate, I approached him and first demanded the ship’s equipment; when he refused to give it back on my making this statement, I subsequently fell in with him near the Hermes[*] which stands by the little gate and summoned him before the despatching board and the overseers of the dockyards; for it was they who at that time brought into court suits regarding ship’s equipments.

To prove that I am speaking the truth, I shall produce as witnesses to these facts those who served the summons.

Witnesses

That he was summoned by me, then, has been testified to you by those who served the summons; now to prove that he was brought into court, take the deposition of the despatching board and the magistrates.

The Deposition

The one who I thought would give me trouble, Demochares of Paeania, was indeed disagreeable before he was brought into court, but after he had been tried and convicted he returned the part of the ship’s equipment that was due from him. But the one whom I should never have expected to go to such an extreme of rascality that he would ever dare to rob the state of the equipment, has gone ahead with all these troublesome lawsuits. He was present in the court-room when the suit was brought in, but never made any defence, nor did he give in the name of anyone for an adjudication,[*] as he should have done, if he claims that someone else has the equipment and that it was not his duty to give it back; but he suffered the verdict to be given against him;

yet after he left the courtroom he did not pay any the more because of that, but decided that for the time being he would keep out of the way and remain quiet until I should have sailed with the fleet, and some time should have elapsed, thinking that I should have to pay for the equipment which he owed to the state either when I returned here, or else to my successor who should come from the navy-boards to take command of the ship. For what answer could I have given this man, when he produced decrees and laws showing that I was obliged to recover the equipment?

And Theophemus, after a lapse of time, when I had come back and made demands upon him, would have said that he had paid back the equipment, and to show that he had paid would have insisted upon these proofs—the crisis, the urgency, and that I was not such a fool and had never been such a friend of his as to wait; for what possible reason, then, when I was serving the state as trierarch and was overseer of the navy-board, and when decrees of such a nature and such a law were in force, should I have obliged him by delaying the collection?