5
So, if someone calls a man a shield-caster, he is to be immune, since the law imposes a penalty for saying that a man has thrown away his shield, but not for saying he has cast it. Similarly, if you were one of the Eleven, you would not accept a prisoner arrested for stripping a man of his cloak or his shirt, unless he were given the name of clothes-stealer.
6
Nor, if someone abducted a child, would you accept him as a kidnapper. Now you have yourself taken proceedings for slander against the person who said you had cast your shield: yet it is not so written in the law, but the phrase is saying a man has thrown it away. How monstrous, then, that if such a thing is said about you, you should make play with the laws in the way I am doing now, and should be avenged on your enemies; but if you say such a thing yourself, you should claim to escape punishment!
7
I ask you, therefore, gentlemen, to protect me, reflecting that it is a greater injury to be accused of killing one’s father than of having cast one’s shield. I, for one, would rather admit to having thrown away any number than to entertaining such thoughts regarding my father. Yet I have seen this man acting in the way that you know, while I myself saved my shield. So on what ground should I fail to get redress from him?
