On the Olive Stump (21-25)

for, the fact being exposed, I should have decided that my sole deliverance lay in seducing you. Well, you did nothing of the sort, and you expect that your statements will effect my ruin: you put in the plea that owing to my influence and my means there is no one willing to bear you witness.

Yet if, when you saw me—as you say—clearing away the sacred olive, you had brought the nine archons on the scene, or some other members of the Areopagus, you would not have had to seek witnesses elsewhere; for then the truth of your statements would have been ascertained by the very persons who were to decide upon the matter.

For you understand that in the plain there are many sacred olives and burnt stumps on my other plots which, had I so desired, it would have been much safer to clear away or cut down or work over, inasmuch as among so many of them the wrongful act was likely to be less evident.