Theomnestus and Apollodorus Against Neaera (6-10)

This fellow Stephanus indicted the decree as illegal, and came before a court. He produced false witnesses to substantiate the calumnious charge that Apollodorus had been a debtor to the treasury for twenty-five years, and by making all sorts of accusations that were foreign to the indictment won a verdict against the decree.

So far as this is concerned, if he saw fit to follow this course, we do not take it ill; but when the jurors were casting their votes to fix the penalty, although we begged him to make concessions, he would not listen to us, but fixed the fine at fifteen talents in order to deprive Apollodorus and his children of their civic rights, and to bring my sister and all of us into extremest distress and utter destitution.

For the property of Apollodorus did not amount to as much as three talents to enable him to pay in full a fine of such magnitude, yet if it were not paid by the ninth prytany[*] the fine would have been doubled and Apollodorus would have been inscribed as owing thirty talents to the treasury, all the property that he has would have been scheduled as belonging to the state, and upon its being sold Apollodorus himself and his children and his wife and all of us would have been reduced to extremest distress.

And more than this, his other daughter would never have been given in marriage; for who would ever have taken to wife a portionless girl from a father who was a debtor to the treasury and without resources? Of such magnitude, you see, were the calamities which Stephanus was bringing upon us all without ever having been wronged by us in any respect. To the jurors, therefore, who at that time decided the matter I am deeply grateful for this at least, that they did not suffer Apollodorus to be utterly ruined, but fixed the amount of the fine at one talent, so that he was able to discharge the debt, although with difficulty. With good reason, then, have we undertaken to pay Stephanus back in the same coin.

For not only did Stephanus seek in this way to bring us to ruin, but he even wished to drive Apollodorus from his country. He brought a false charge against him that, having once gone to Aphidna[*] in search of a runaway slave of his, he had there struck a woman, and that she had died of the blow; and he suborned some slaves and got them to give out that they were men of Cyren,[*] and by public proclamation cited Apollodorus before the court of the Palladium[*] on a charge of murder.

This fellow Stephanus prosecuted the case, declaring on oath that Apollodorus had killed the woman with his own hand, and he imprecated destruction upon himself and his race and his house, affirming matters which had never taken place, which he had never seen or heard from any human being. However, since he was proved to have committed perjury and to have brought forward a false accusation, and was shown to have been hired by Cephisophon and Apollophanes to procure for pay the banishment or the disfranchisement of Apollodorus, he received but a few votes out of a total of five hundred, and left the court a perjured man and one with the reputation of a scoundrel.