previous next
[20]

But before the witnesses come up I want to say a few words to you. You are well acquainted, gentlemen, with the tricks of defendants and with the requests made by others asking pardon for them. You know too well that desire for bribes and favors induces many witnesses to forget what they know, to fail to appear, or to contrive some other excuse. Ask the witnesses therefore to come up without hesitation and not to put offered favors before your interests and the state. Ask them to pay their country the debt of truth and justice which they owe and not to follow the example of Leocrates by failing in this duty. Otherwise let them swear the oath of disclaimer with their hands on the sacrifice.1 If they refuse both these alternatives, we will summons them in the interest of yourselves, our laws and our democracy. Read the evidence.“Evidence

1 At Athens depositions bearing on a case were submitted in writing to a magistrate at a preliminary inquiry (ἀνάκρισις), and no fresh evidence was allowed at the trial itself. But if a witness refused to appear at the a)na/krisis he might be called to the trial by either party, on pain of a 1000 drachma fine, to vouch for the truth of a written statement which the clerk would read out to him. If he professed ignorance he had to support his claim with a solemn oath (e)cwmosi/a). See Isaeus 9.18; Aeschin. 1.45; Dem. 19.176, etc.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

load focus Greek (1962)
hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Sort places alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a place to search for it in this document.
Athens (Greece) (1)

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide References (4 total)
  • Cross-references in notes to this page (1):
  • Cross-references in notes from this page (3):
    • Aeschines, Against Timarchus, 45
    • Demosthenes, On the False Embassy, 176
    • Isaeus, Astyphilus, 18
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: