Book 40
12
When Perseus had finished, all present looked at Demetrius, expecting him to reply at once. There was a long silence and everybody saw that he was bathed in tears and unable to speak. At length they told him that he must speak, and he was compelled to stifle his grief. So he began: "Everything, my father, on which those who are accused could rely for their defence has been prejudiced by my accuser. The tears which he feigned for the purpose of effecting another's ruin have made you suspect the reality of mine. Ever since my return from Rome he has been hatching secret plots against me day and night with his confederates, and now he deliberately fastens on me the character not only of an intriguer but even of an open assassin. He alarms you with the bugbear of his own danger in order that through you he may hasten the destruction of his unoffending brother. He says that there is no place of refuge for him in the whole world in order that I may have no hope of safety with you. Beset by foes, deserted by friends, destitute of all resources, he loads me with the odium aroused by the favour shown to me by foreigners, which hurts me more than it benefits. How like a common prosecutor has he acted in mixing up his account of last night's events with a bitter attack upon the rest of my life so that he put that incident, which you will see in its true colours, in a suspicious light, by representing the tenor of my life as other than what it is, and bolstering up that false and scandalous description of my hopes and wishes and designs by this fictitious and hollow evidence. And at the same time he tried to make his accusations appear as though they were uttered without preparation, on the spur of the moment, called forth forsooth by the alarm and tumult of the night. But, Perseus, if I were a traitor to my father and the realm, if I were scheming with the Romans or with any of my father's enemies, you ought not to have waited for this trumped-up story of last night's doings, you ought to have accused me of treachery before this. If that accusation as distinct from this one was without any foundation and a proof of your bad feeling towards me, rather than of my guilt, surely it ought to be passed over today and deferred till another occasion, so that the question which of us in a spirit of unheard-of hatred has been intriguing against the other might be decided on its merits. At all events, so far as I am able to do so in this sudden bewilderment, I shall separate what you have confused together, and unveil last night's plot, to show whether you or I were the author of it.
