28
He states that we went to his house with potsherds in our hands, and that I threatened to kill him, and that this is premeditation. But I think that this lie of his, gentlemen, is easily detected, not only by you who are used to investigating this sort of case, but by everyone else as well.
29
For who can find it credible that by a premeditated manoeuvre I went to Simon’s house after daybreak with the boy, when so many people had gathered about him, unless I had become so utterly insane as to be eager to fight them all single— handed; especially when I knew that he would have been delighted to see me at his door,—he who in fact kept coming to my house, and entered it by force, and, disregarding both my sister and my nieces, had the audacity to seek me out, and having discovered where I happened to be dining called me out and beat me?
30
And so, as it seems, I, who at first, to avoid notoriety, kept quiet, taking this man’s wickedness to be so much misfortune to myself, was yet after a lapse of time, as he says, converted to a desire for notoriety!
31
Now if the boy had been living with him, there could be some show of reason in his lie that I was driven by my desire to an act of quite improbable folly: but the fact is that the boy would not even talk to him, but hated him more than anyone in the world, and was actually living with me.
