At this juncture a third person who was present— his name may remain in obscurity—said:

The anonymous speaker may safely be considered the writer himself, as in the Peregrinus; cf. p. 8, n. 2.

“As a matter of fact, gentlemen, if this fellow, so smooth of jowl, effeminate in voice, and otherwise similar to a eunuch, should strip, you would find him very masculine. Unless those who talk about him are lying, he was once taken in adultery, commissis membris, as the table of the law says. At that time he secured his acquittal by resorting to the name of eunuch and finding sanctuary in it, since the judges on that occasion discredited the accusation from the very look of him. Now, however, he may recant, I suppose, for the sake of the pelf that is in view.”