Apollodorus Against Timotheus

Let no one of you think, men of the jury, that it is a thing beyond belief that Timotheus should have owed money to my father and is now being prosecuted by me in this suit. On the contrary, when I have called to your minds the occasion on which the loan was contracted and the events in which the defendant was at that time involved and the straits to which he was reduced, you will then hold that my father was most generous to Timotheus, and that the defendant is not only ungrateful, but is the most dishonest of humankind;

for he got from my father all that he asked, and received from the bank money at a time when he was in great need and when he was in grievous danger of losing his life[*](His treasurer, Antimachus, actually was condemned to death, and Timotheus himself was saved from a like fate only by the intercession of influential friends. See Dem. 49.10.); yet he has not only made no return, but even seeks to rob me of the money which was granted him. And yet, if matters had gone badly with Timotheus, my father’s money, too, was lost, for he lent it without security and without witnesses; but, if the defendant got off safe, it rested with him to choose when, having the funds available, he should pay us back.

But for all that, men of the jury, my father did not count the holding of large sums of money as important a matter as to supply Timotheus with what he needed in the time of his distress. No, my father thought, men of the jury, that, if Timotheus then got safely out of those dangers and returned home from the service of the king,[*](After being deposed from his command of the Athenian fleet in 373 B.C., Timotheus entered the service of the king of Persia.) when the defendant was in better circumstances than at the time, he would not only recover his money, but would be in a position to obtain whatever else he might wish from Timotheus.