Assume that the murderers hurried off, leaving their victims before they had stripped them, because they noticed the approach of passers-by. Then even if the persons who came upon them found the master dead, they would have found the slave still conscious, as he was picked up alive and gave evidence. They would have questioned him closely and have informed us who the criminals were; so that the defendant would not have been accused. Or assume, on the other hand, that others, who had been seen by the two committing some similar outrage, had murdered them to keep the matter dark. Then news of that outrage would have been published at the same time as the news of the present murder, and suspicion would have fallen on those concerned in it. Again, how persons whose position was not so serious should have plotted against the dead man sooner than persons who had more to fear, I fail to understand. The fears and sense of injury of the second were enough to put an end to caution; whereas with the first the risk and disgrace involved, to which their resentment could not blind them, were sufficient to sober the anger in their hearts, even if they had intended to do the deed. The defense are wrong when they say that the evidence of the slave is not to be trusted; where evidence of this sort is concerned, slaves are not tortured; they are given their freedom. It is when they deny a theft or conspire with their masters to keep silence that we believe them to tell the truth only under torture. The evidence of slaves was accepted only under torture. But the torture could not be inflicted without the consent of the owner. Hence there are instances of the purchase of slaves solely for the purpose of extorting evidence from them (see Antiph. 5.47 , On the Murder of Herodes , for a case in point). The last half of the present paragraph envisages a similar purchase in order to obtain evidence against the slave’s former owner. On the other hand, a slave who defended his master’s life at the risk of his own would more often than not be rewarded with his freedom; and once he was free, he could not be tortured; he gave his evidence in a court of law in the ordinary way. Thus the argument in the present passage is; the dying slave was virtually a free man, as he had given his life for his master; hence there is no ground whatever for maintaining, as the defendant is doing, that his evidence cannot be accepted in court because it was not given under torture. Again, the probabilities are not in favor of his having been absent from the scene of the crime rather than present at it. In remaining absent he was going to run the same risks as he would run if present, as any of his confederates if caught would have shown that it was he who had originated the plot. And not only that; he was going to dispatch the business on hand less satisfactorily, as not one of the criminals taking part would have felt the same enthusiasm for the deed. Further, he did not believe the danger threatened by the indictment to be less serious than that in which he now stands, but much more so, as I will prove to you. Let us assume that his expectations of conviction or acquittal were the same in the one suit as in the other. i.e. that his position in both suits was completely hopeless. Now he had no hope of the indictment being dropped as long as his enemy was alive; his entreaties would never have been listened to. But he did not, on the other hand, expect to be involved in the present trial, as he thought that he could commit the murder without being found out.