Epaenetus, however, when he got out and was again his own master preferred before the Thesmothetae an indictment for unlawful imprisonment against this Stephanus in accordance with the law which enacts that, if a man unlawfully imprisons another on a charge of adultery, the person in question may indict him before the Thesmothetae on a charge of illegal imprisonment; and if he shall convict the one who imprisoned him and prove that he was the victim of an unlawful plot, he shall be let off scot-free, and his sureties shall be released from their engagement; but if it shall appear that he was an adulterer, the law bids his sureties give him over to the one who caught him in the act, and he in the court-room may inflict upon him, as upon one guilty of adultery, whatever treatment he pleases, provided he use no knife.