Apollodorus Against Timotheus in the Matter of a Debt (26-30)

and, introducing to him Philondas, a Megarian by birth, but one who resided as an alien at Athens,—a man who at that time was loyally devoted to the defendant and was employed in his service—he begged my father, that when Philonidas (whom he then introduced to him) should come back from Macedonia bringing some timber, which had been given to the defendant by Amyntas,[*] he would supply him with money for the freight of the timber, and let him deliver the timber to the defendant’s house in Peiraeus; for he declared the timber belonged to him.

At the same time in preferring this request, he made statements which are quite inconsistent with his present actions. For he said that even if he should not obtain what he asked of my father, he would not be angry, as another might who failed to obtain what he wanted, but would show his gratitude, if he should ever find himself able to do so, for the services which my father had rendered him at his request. On hearing this my father was pleased at his words and commended him for remembering the favors shown him, and promised to do all that he asked.

Timotheus, then, after this set sail to join the king’s generals, but Philondas, to whom he had presented my father as one who would pay the freight, when he should come back with the timber, set out on his journey to Macedonia. The time was about the month Thargelion,[*] in the archonship of Asteius.

In the following year Philondas came back from Macedonia, bringing the timber, while Timotheus was absent in the king’s service. He approached my father and asked him to furnish the freight for the timber, in order that he might settle with the shipowner, as Timotheus had begged my father to do, when he was about to sail and had introduced Philondas to him. So my father took him to the bank and ordered Phormio to pay him the freight of the timber, one thousand seven hundred and fifty drachmae.

And Phormio counted out the money, and set down Timotheus as owing it (for it was he who had asked my father to furnish the freight for the timber, and the timber was his), and he wrote a memorandum of the purpose for which the money was received, and the name of the person who received it. The date of the transaction was the archonship of Alcisthenes,[*] the year after Timotheus set sail to take service with the king.