Apollodorus Against Timotheus

Demosthenes

Demosthenes. Vol. V. Private Orations, XLI-XLIX. Murray, A. T., translator. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1939 (printing).

About the same time Timosthenes of Aegilia[*](Aegilia was a deme of the tribe Antiochis.) also arrived home from a journey abroad which he had made on private business. Timosthenes was a friend and partner of Phormio, and when he set sail he had given to Phormio to put away for him along with other articles two bowls of Lycian workmanship. By chance the boy, not knowing that these bowls were the property of someone else, gave them to Aeschrion, the body-servant of the defendant, when he was sent to my father by Timotheus and requested the bedding and the cloaks and the bowls, and borrowed the mina of silver at the time when Alcetas and Jason came to the defendant’s house.

When Timosthenes reached home and asked for the return of the bowls, Timotheus being still abroad in the king’s service, my father persuaded him to accept the value of the bowls, as much as they were worth by weight, namely two hundred and thirty-seven drachmae. So he paid to Timosthenes the value of the bowls and entered on his books the defendant as owing what he paid to Timosthenes for the bowls in addition to the rest of the debt which the defendant owed him.

To prove that all these statements of mine are true the clerk shall read you the depositions which bear upon them; first, that of those who were at that time clerks in the bank and paid the money from its funds to the persons to whom Timotheus bade them pay it, and then that of the man who received the price of the bowls.

The Depositions

You have learned, then, from the depositions which have just been read, that I am telling you nothing but the truth regarding the matters which I mentioned. And that the defendant himself admits that the timber brought by Philondas was delivered to his house in the Peiraeus,—this, too, is proved by the deposition which will be read to you.

The Deposition