Ariston Against Conon, an Action for Assault (16-20)

No man in the world has ever seen us drunken or committing outrages, and I hold that I am doing nothing unfeeling in demanding to receive satisfaction according to the law for the wrongs I have suffered. This man’s sons are welcome, so far as I am concerned, to be Ithyphalli and Autolecythi; I only pray the gods that these things and all things like them may recoil upon Conon and his sons;

for they are those who initiate one another with the rites of Ithyphallus, and indulge in acts which decent people cannot even speak of without deep disgrace, to say nothing of performing them.

But what has all this to do with me? Why, for my part, I am amazed if they have discovered any excuse or pretext which will make it possible in your court for any man, if convicted of assault and battery, to escape punishment. The laws take a far different view, and have provided that even pleas of necessity shall not be pressed too far. For example (you see I have had to inquire into these matters and inform myself about them because of the defendant), there are actions for evil-speaking;

and I am told that these are instituted for this purpose—that men may not be led on, by using abusive language back and forth, to deal blows to one another. Again, there are actions for battery; and these, I hear, exist for this reason—that a man, finding himself the weaker party, may not defend himself with a stone or anything of that sort, but may await legal redress. Again, there are public prosecutions for wounding, to the end that wounds may not lead to murder.

The least of these evils, namely abusive language, has, I think, been provided for to prevent the last and most grievous, that murder may not ensue, and that men be not led on step by step from vilification to blows, from blows to wounds, and from wounds to murder, but that in the laws its own penalty should be provided for each of these acts, and that the decision should not be left to the passion or the will of the person concerned.

This, then, is what is ordained in the laws; but if Conon says, We belong to a club of Ithyphalli, and in our love-affairs we strike and throttle whom we please, are you, then, going to let him off with a laugh? I think not. No one of you would have been seized with a fit of laughter, if he had happened to be present when I was dragged and stripped and maltreated, when I was borne home on a litter to the house which I had left strong and well, and my mother rushed out, and the women set up such a wailing and screaming (as if someone had died in the house) that some of the neighbors sent to inquire what it was that had happened.