Apollodorus Against Callippus (11-15)

After he had spoken thus, my father answered, Callippus, I want to oblige you (I should be mad, if I did not), but on this condition, that I shall not damage my own reputation, nor suffer any loss through the business; to suggest what you propose to Archebiades and Aristonoüs and to Cephisiades himself, can cause me no trouble; but if they do not choose to do as you say at my suggestion, you must talk to them yourself. Be easy in your mind, Pasion, said he; if you like, you will force them to do what I want.

This, men of the jury, is what the plaintiff said to my father, and what my father repeated to Archebiades and Cephisiades at the plaintiff’s request and as a favor to him; and from this, little by little, this suit has been got up. I was ready to swear by the most solemn of oaths, that I verily heard these statements from my father.

The plaintiff, however, who demands that you believe him as one speaking the truth, waited for three years after my father had spoken for the first time to Archebiades and the other friends of Cephisiades, and after they had refused to pay any attention to Callippus or to what he said;

then, when he learned that my father was in poor health, and had difficulty in coming up to the city, and that his sight was failing, he brought an action against him, not indeed an action for money, like the present one, but an action for damages, declaring that my father had wrought him injury by paying to Cephisiades the money which Lycon, the Heracleote, had left in his keeping after having promised not to pay it without the plaintiff’s consent. After he had brought suit, he took back the papers from the public arbitrator, and challenged my father to refer the case to Lysitheides, a friend of Callippus himself and of Isocrates and Aphareus,[*] and an acquaintance of my father.

My father gave his consent, and during his lifetime Lysitheides despite his intimacy with these men did not venture to commit any wrong against us. And yet some of the plaintiff’s friends are so lacking in shame, that they had the audacity to depose that Callippus challenged my father to take an oath, and that my father refused to swear before Lysitheides; and they imagine that they can convince you that in that case Lysitheides, a friend of Callippus and the one acting as arbitrator in the case, would have refrained from making an immediate award against my father, especially since my father thus refused to make himself the judge of his own case.[*]