On a Wound by Premeditation

It is surprising, gentlemen of the Council, that the fact of our reconcilement is so keenly disputed, and that, while he cannot deny his having restored the yoke of oxen, the slaves, amid all the goods on the estate that he received under the exchange, he denies, in face of the settlement clearly made on every point, that we agreed to share the woman between us. It is plain that he made the exchange because of her; and the only reason he can give—if he wishes to speak the truth—for having restored what he received is that our friends reconciled us on all these matters. I could wish that he had not been omitted by lot from the judges at the Dionysia, so that you might have seen clearly that he had been reconciled to me, from his decision that my tribe was the winner. In fact he recorded it thus on his tablet, but he was omitted by lot. My statement on this is true, as Philinus and Diocles know: but it is not possible for them to testify when they have not taken oath upon the charge laid against me; you would then have perceived clearly that it was we who proposed him as judge, and that it was on account of us that he went on the bench. But—if he will have it so—he was our enemy: I grant him that, for it makes no difference. So then I went myself to kill him, as he says, and forced my way into his house. Why, then, did I not kill him, having his person in my power, and having got the upper hand to the extent of taking the woman? Let him explain it to you: but he cannot tell you. Furthermore, everyone of you is aware that he would have been killed more quickly by the stroke of a dagger than by the blow of a fist. Now, you find that not even he accuses us of having come with anything like that in our hands; he only says he was struck by a potsherd. Why, it is evident already from what he has said that there has been no premeditation. For we should not have gone in that way, when it was uncertain whether we should find in his house a potsherd or something to serve for killing him, but should have brought it from home as we set out. In point of fact, we admit that we went to see boys and flute-girls and were in liquor: so how is that premeditation? In no wise, to my thinking. But this man takes his love-sickness in an opposite fashion to the rest of us: he wants to have it both ways—to avoid paying up the money and to have the woman as well. And then, with his passion inflamed by the woman, he is excessively hasty of hand and the worse for liquor, and one is forced to defend oneself. As to her, sometimes it is I, and sometimes he, for whom she professes affection, wishing to be loved by both. Now I have shown an easy temper from the beginning, as I still do to-day; but he has got into such an irritable state that he is not ashamed to call a black eye a wound, and to be carried about in a litter and pretend to be in a dreadful condition, for the sake of a harlot wench whom he is free to leave uncontested on restoring the money to me. And he says that he has been plotted against in a monstrous way, and contests every point with us; yet although it was open to him to procure his proof by having the woman tortured, he refused. She would first have informed you whether she was shared by us or belonged only to him, whether I contributed half the money or he gave it all, and whether we had been reconciled or were still enemies; also whether we went on receipt of a summons, or without invitation from anyone, and whether this man struck the first blow by assault, or I first hit him. Each of these points in turn, as of the rest, could have been cleared up with ease in every ease both for the public and for this court.