Witnesses It is easy, then, to make sure that even Pancleon himself, far from regarding himself as a Plataean, does not suppose himself to be even a freeman. For when a man has chosen, on being carried off by force, to make his own associates liable to action for assault rather than to be vindicated as a freeman by legal process and to get damages from those who were arresting him, nobody can have difficulty in perceiving that he was so conscious of his being a slave that he was afraid to provide guarantors and to face a trial concerning his civil status.