Apollodorus Against Nicostratus in the Matter of Slaves of Aresthusius (14-17)

Accordingly he first conspired against me with some persons with whom I was at law, and bound himself by an oath to support them; then, after my action against them had commenced, he divulged to them my arguments, with which he was acquainted, and he entered me as a debtor to the public treasury to the amount of six hundred and ten drachmae, as a fine for non-production of property (although no citation had been served upon me), having got the case brought on through the agency of Lycidas the miller. As witnesses against me to attest the citation, he entered the name of his own brother, this Arethusius to whom these slaves belong, and another person; and they were prepared, in the event of my bringing to a preliminary hearing the suits which I had entered against my relatives[*] who were wronging me, to lay an information against me, as being a debtor to the treasury, and throw me into prison.

And more than all this, he who had secured a judgement against me for six hundred and ten drachmae, when no citation had been served upon me, and had entered the names of false witnesses to the citation, made a forcible entry into my house and carried off all the furniture to the value of more than twenty minae; he did not leave a thing. I thought it my duty to avenge myself, and after paying the debt to the treasury on hearing of the fine, I was proceeding to indict the one who admitted that he had cited me to appear (that is, Arethusius), on a charge of false citation, as the law directs. He, however, came to my farm by night, cut off all the choice fruit-grafts that were there, and the tree-vines as well, and broke down the nursery-beds of olive trees set in rows round about, making worse havoc than enemies in war would have done.

More than this, as they were neighbors and my farm adjoined theirs, they sent into it in the daytime a young boy who was an Athenian, and put him up to plucking off the flowers from my rose-bed, in order that, if I caught him and in a fit of anger put him in bonds or struck him, assuming him to be a slave, they might bring against me an indictment for assault.

When they failed in this, and I merely called witnesses to observe the wrong done me without committing any offence against them myself, they played against me the most dastardly trick.

When I had now brought my indictment of him for false citation to the preliminary examination and was about to bring the case into court, Nicostratus lay in wait for me near the stone quarries, as I was coming back late from Peiraeus, and struck me with his fist and seizing me around the waist was on the point of throwing me into the quarries, had not some people come up and, hearing my cries, run to my assistance. A few days later, I came into court on a day that was divided up among a number of cases, and proving that he had falsely attested the citation and was guilty of all the other crimes which I have mentioned, I won a conviction.