Against Evergus and Mnesibulus

and the jury thought that the testimony was true, and that I was seeking to evade the evidence which the woman might have given in regard to the assault and the question as to which one of us delivered the first blow (for this is what constitutes assault). Is it not, then, a necessary inference that these witnesses have given false testimony, men who even up to this day dare not deliver up the woman in person, as according to their statement Theophemus offered to do, and as they testified for him? And they dare not establish by actual fact the truth of their testimony and free the witnesses from the risk of a trial by making Theophemus, since he then refused to do so, deliver up the woman in person,

to be put to the torture regarding the assault for which I am suing Theophemus, and so make the proof result from the very statements made at that time by Theophemus with a view to deceiving the jurors. For he said in the course of the trial for assault that the witnesses who had been present and who testified to what had taken place by a deposition in writing, as the law provides, were false witnesses and had been suborned by me; but that the woman who had been present would tell the truth, deposing, not to a written document, but under torture, giving thus the strongest kind of evidence as to which party delivered the first blow.