119
I think, therefore, that neither Stephanus himself nor anyone on his behalf will succeed in proving that the charges and the testimony are false—that, in short, this Neaera is an Athenian woman. But I hear that he is going to set up some such defense as this—that he is keeping her, not as a wife, but as a mistress, and that the children are not hers, but were born to him by another woman, an Athenian and a relative of his, whom he will assert that he married at a earlier date.
120
To meet the impudence of this assertion of his, of the defense which he has concocted, and of the witnesses whom he has suborned to support it, I tendered him a precise and reasonable challenge, by means of which you would have been enabled to know the whole truth: I proposed that he should deliver up for the torture the women-servants, Thratta and Coccalinê, who remained loyally with Neaera when she came to Stephanus from Megara, and those whom she purchased subsequently, while living with him, Xennis and Drosis;
121
for these women know perfectly well that Proxenus, who died, Ariston, who is still living, and Antidorides the runner, and Phano, formerly called Strybel, who married Theogenes, the king, are children of Neaera. And if it should appear from the torture that this man Stephanus had married an Athenian wife and that these children were borne to him, not by Neaera, but by another woman who was an Athenian, I offered to withdraw from the case and to prevent this indictment from coming into court.
