37
Regarding the sofa-makers, if you took money, and made large profits for yourself by making loans on security that was mine—you, who should rather have prevented others from doing so—and finally made away with the slaves altogether, what, pray, can the witnesses do in your behalf? These men at any rate have not testified that you admitted lending money on the security of my slaves, and that you appropriated the slaves to yourself. On the contrary, it was you who acknowledged this in your account, and the witnesses testified to the fact against you.
38
Now look you, as to the ivory and iron, I have this to say: all the slaves of the household know that the plaintiff used to sell these articles. I am ready now, as I was then, to give over to him any one of these slaves whom he may choose to be examined by torture. If then, he alleges that I refuse to surrender the man who has knowledge of the facts, and offer him others who have no such knowledge, he will but show that he ought all the more to have accepted my offer. For if those whom I offered to him as having knowledge of the facts, declared that he had none of these articles in his possession, he would of course have been acquitted of the charge.
