8
On hearing this story, I felt pity for him, and moreover I saw in what wretched plight he was, and he showed me the wounds of the fetters on his calves (he has the scars of them still, but, if you bid him show them to you, he will not wish to do so); I therefore answered that in time past I had been a true friend to him, and that now I would help him in his distress, that I forgave him the three hundred drachmae which I had given his brother for the expenses of his journey to fetch him, and that I would make a contribution of one thousand drachmae toward his ransom.
9
Nor did I make this promise in words only and fail to perform it in act; but, since I was not well provided with funds in consequence of my quarrel with Phormion and of his depriving me of the estate which my father left me, I took to Theocles, who at that time was carrying on a banking business, some cups and a chaplet of gold, which I happened to have in my house as a part of my ancestral inheritance, and bade him give Nicostratus a thousand drachmae; and that sum I gave him outright as a gift, and I acknowledge that it was a gift.
