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Why, you yourselves were told of late in the Assembly that DiotimusAn Athenian general, 388-387 B.C. had got forty talents more from the ship-masters and merchantsIn return for the protection given them in their business by the general. than he himself admitted; and when he rendered an account on his return, and was indignant at being slandered in his absence, nobody put that matter to the proof, although the State was in need of money,
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and he was ready to show his accounts. Just imagine what the position would have been if, after all the Athenians had been told that Diotimus had forty talents, something had then happened to him before he reached our shores. His relatives would then have been in the gravest danger, if they had been obliged to defend themselves against that monstrous slander without any knowledge of the facts of the case. So, for your being deceived in many people even now, and indeed for the ruin that some have unjustly incurred, you have to thank those who make light of telling lies and are bent on bringing malicious charges against their fellows.
