For Polystratus (26-30)

Witnesses

You have heard the witnesses, gentlemen of the jury. As to my disposition towards your people, I will make it plain to you. A Syracusan had arrived in that place with a form of oath, and was ready to administer it, and was approaching the people of the place one by one:[*] I at once spoke against him, and went and reported the matter to Tydeus; he summoned an Assembly, and there were speeches not a few. However, I will call witnesses to what I said myself.

Witnesses

Consider now the letter from my father, which he arranged to be conveyed to me, and say whether its contents were of good or evil import to your people. In it he had written concerning our domestic affairs, and further, that when things were going well in Sicily I should return. Now surely your interests and those of the people there were the same; so, if he had not been loyal to the State and to you, he would never have sent such a letter.

Then again, as to my youngest brother, I will inform you of his disposition towards you. When a descent was made on us by the returning exiles, who not only wreaked here whatever damage they could, but also raided and harried you from their fortress,[*] he galloped out from the cavalry ranks and killed one of them. As witnesses to this I will produce to you the actual men who were present at the affair.

Witnesses

Of my eldest brother enough is known by his actual comrades in the campaign,—by any of you who were with Leon at the Hellespont,—for him to be accounted the equal of any man in spirit. Please come up here.

Witnesses

How, then, should we not obtain our reward from you, with such characters as those? Is our destruction to be justified by the slanders by which my father has been traduced to you, and are we to reap no benefit from the zeal that we have shown in the city’s service? Nay, there would be no justice in it. Supposing that we ought to suffer on account of the slander aimed at him, we deserve, on account of that zeal of ours, to save both him and ourselves.