139
I should be glad to refute these slanders, if the occasion permitted me to do so; for I believe that if you could hear me, you would come to loathe the men who have stirred the city to anger against Timotheus and the men who dare to speak evil of him. Now, however, I shall leave this subject and take up again my own defense and the case before us.
140
But I am at a loss to know how to proceed with the rest of my speech—what topic to take up first and what next; for the power to speak in any set order has escaped me. Perhaps, therefore, I have no choice but to discuss each point as it happens to occur to me. Accordingly, I am going to lay bare to you the thoughts which have now come into my mind. I have been thinking all along that I ought to put them before you, but I have been advised against doing so.
141
For when I was indicted, I pondered these very matters, as any one of you would have done, and I reviewed my life and my actions, dwelling longest on the things for which I thought I deserved approbation. But one of my associates, hearing me, made bold to urge an objection which was amazing in the extreme; he stated that while my life as I described it was worthy of emulation, yet he himself greatly feared that my story would irritate many of my hearers.