12
Witnesses It is easy, then, to make sure that even Pancleon himself, far from regarding himself as a Plataean, does not suppose himself to be even a freeman. For when a man has chosen, on being carried off by force, to make his own associates liable to action for assault rather than to be vindicated as a freeman by legal process and to get damages from those who were arresting him, nobody can have difficulty in perceiving that he was so conscious of his being a slave that he was afraid to provide guarantors and to face a trial concerning his civil status.
13
Now, that he is far from being a Plataean, I think you perceive pretty clearly from these statements; and that even the man himself, who is most fully aware of his own position, did not expect you to believe that he was a Plataean, will be readily impressed on you by his own conduct. For in his counter-deposition at the proceedings brought against him by Aristodicus, here present, when he contended that his case did not lie before the Polemarch, he was declared on evidenceIn certain disputes the evidence itself sufficed for the decision, unless the convicted person could incriminate the witness: the first step to this was a denunciation ἐπίσκηψις. not to be a Plataean.
