In Defence of Lycophron (4-8)

Let me now repeat to you the answer which I gave to the relatives and also to my own relations directly I arrived, namely this. If these accusations are true, I agree to having done all the other things set down in the impeachment. But they are false, as is surely obvious to everyone.

For who is there in Athens so uncritical as to believe these allegations? There must have been attenders, gentlemen of the jury, with the carriage that conveyed the bride: first a muleteer and a guide, and then her escort of boys, and also Dioxippus.[*] For he was in attendance, too, since she was a widow being given away in marriage.

Was I then so utterly senseless, do you think, that with all those other people in the procession, as well as Dioxippus and Euphraeus his fellow-wrestler, both acknowledged to be the strongest men in Greece, I had the impudence to pass such comments on a free woman, in the hearing of everyone, and was not afraid of being strangled on the spot? Would anyone have listened to such remarks about his sister as these men accuse me of having made, without killing the speaker?

And to crown it all, as I said just now, are we to conclude that Charippus was so completely obtuse that he was still prepared to marry her, although in the first place she said beforehand, according to their story, that she was pledged to me and in the second place he heard me encouraging her to keep the promises she had made? Do you think that the mad Orestes, or Margites,[*] the greatest fool of all time, would act like that?

But then, in my opinion, gentlemen of the jury, the prosecutors in a trial have many advantages over the defendants. For them the case involves no risk,[*] and so they are free to talk and lie to their heart’s content, while the men on trial are afraid and so forget to mention a great deal, even of what they have really done.