12
What better opportunity could he have had of convicting us of falsehood than by putting my slave to torture? But Aphobus knew better than anyone else that the slave had borne true testimony, and therefore he declined the test. And in truth it is not one or two only who know these facts; the challenge was not made in secret, but in the midst of the agora where many were present.
12
Call, please, the witnesses to these facts.
12
The Witnesses
13
The fellow is so cunning, and so ready to pretend ignorance of what is right, that, although he is pressing a suit for false witness, and although you are to cast your votes regarding this, and have sworn so to do, he refused the proffered examination by torture in regard to the testimony (the point to which he should have devoted his argument), and declares that he requires the slave to be given up for testing in regard to other matters. In this he is lying.
14
Is it not indeed monstrous that he should claim that he is being outrageously treated by my refusal of his demand to have delivered to him for torture a freeman (for such I shall conclusively prove Milyas to be), and should not consider that my witnesses are being outrageously treated, when I offer him one who is admittedly a slave, to be tested by torture regarding their testimony, and he refuses? For he surely cannot maintain this, that for some matters, which he himself desires, torture is a certain test, and for others not.
