As for his digging through the wall to have intercourse with the woman: that is quite incredible. For the accuser1 has not shown either that he fell out with the people who had previously been serving him and readily submitting to any orders he gave them, or that they had a quarrel with him and so refused their services, thus inducing Lycophron to dig through the wall, as their persons were no longer . . . would not have dug through the wall. Why should a man who was not pressed for time and had the chance both of receiving news from her and giving his own messages and . . . and . . .2 never forbade him （?） the house. Besides, it is almost out of the question for her servants to have quarrelled with him. Which one of them could have grown so rash as to withhold either his messages to her or hers to him, for reasons of personal spite? For the danger was imminent, if . . . what these men assumed. In actual fact they saw their master in an extremely weak condition and had their mistress, the future ruler of the household, constantly before their eyes as a reminder that, if he died, they would be punished in return for what they had done against her wishes. It is therefore incredible that Lycophron dug through the wall; nor was he accustomed, as the accuser claims, to converse with the servants. What reason would he have had for doing so? Why should they have quarrelled with him, whom, as their mistress grew more favorably disposed to him . . .
Hyperides. Minor Attic Orators in two volumes, 2, with an English translation by J. O. Burtt, M.A. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1962.
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