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[33]
Now, is there any man who would have submitted to the
payment of so large a rental for the counter, the site, and the books? And is
there any man who would have entrusted the rest of the assets to a man thanks to
whom the bank had incurred so great a liability?1 For, if there was a shortage of so large an amount, it
was incurred while Phormio was manager. For you all know that, while my father
was engaged in the banking business, Phormio sat at the counter and was his
manager; so that he ought rather to be in the mill2 than to become master of the rest of the property.
1 Pasio is stated by Phormio to have owed the bank eleven talents （Dem. 36.4）. This debt may be assumed to have been properly secured, so that it was in no sense a deficit. The present speaker, however, represents it as such, and implies that the bank had been brought to insolvence through Phormio's incompetence.
2 Slaves were often condemned to the heavy labor of turning the millstone.
Demosthenes. Demosthenes with an English translation by A. T. Murray, Ph.D., LL.D. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1939.
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