‘My grandfather, having only this one daughter, married his second wife, the sister of Diodes, who bore him two sons. He brought up my mother in the house with his wife and children, and during the lifetime of the latter, when his daughter was of marriageable age, he bestowed her on Nausimenes of Cholarge, giving her a dowry of clothing and gold ornaments, as well as twenty-five minae. Three or four years after this, Nausimenes fell ill and died, before my mother had borne him any children. My grandfather took her back to his house, but owing to the disorder of her husband’s affairs he did not recover all the dowry he had given with her; he then married her a second time to my father, with a dowry of 1000 drachmae. ‘In face of the charges now brought by the plaintiffs, how can my statements be proved? I sought and found the way. ‘Ciron’s domestic slaves, male and female, must know whether my mother was or was not his daughter; whether she lived in his house; whether he did or did not on two occasions give feasts in honour of her marriage; what dowry each of her husbands received. Wishing to examine them under torture by way of supporting the evidence already in my hands, in order that you might put more confidence in their evidence when they had submitted to the examination than you would if they were only apprehending it, I requested the plaintiffs to surrender their slaves of both sexes to be examined on the above points and all others of which they have knowledge. But this man, who will shortly request you to believe his own witnesses, shrank from submitting to such an examination. But if I can prove that he refused, how can we avoid the presumption that his witnesses are now giving false evidence since he has shrunk from a test so searching? ‘To prove the truth of my assertion, take first this deposition and read it.[157] [_The deposition._] ‘Now you hold the opinion, both personally and officially, that torture is the surest test; and whenever slaves and freemen come forward as witnesses and you have to arrive at facts, you do not rely on the evidence of the freemen, but torture the slaves and seek thus to discover the truth. You are right in your preference; for you know that whereas some witnesses have been suspected of giving false evidence, no slaves have ever been proved to have made untrue statements in consequence of the torture to which they were submitted.[158]