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,Margites, the hero of an old comic epic early attributed to Homer, came to be regarded as the typification of a fool. 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,For the importance of this statement for determining the date of the speech see Introduction. 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.