13. “But let us examine the process of this accusation, in whatever manner it has been fabricated. He has arraigned me of attempting his life, by several methods; and all these modes of attack he has crowded into the space of one day. I intended to kill him by day when we engaged after the purification, and, if it seems good to the gods, even on the day of purification. I intended, when I invited him to supper, to take him off by poison of course. I intended, when some armed persons followed me to join his party in their conviviality, to kill him with the sword. You see what sort of opportunities were chosen for this murder; those of sport, feasting, and revelling. What? on what sort of a day! On the day in which the army was purified; in which, after the royal armour of all the former kings of Macedon was carried in procession between the divided victim, when we two only rode along with you, father, at your sides, and the body of the Macedonian troops followed. Now, even supposing that I had formerly been guilty of some crime requiring expiation, could I, after being purified and expiated in this sacred solemnity, at the very time especially when I was looking at the victim laid on each side of our road, revolved in my mind fratricide, poisons and swords prepared against the feast? With what other sacred rites could I afterwards atone for the guilt of a mind, contaminated with every kind of villany? But whilst his understanding, blinded by a desire for accusing, wishes to render every thing an object of suspicion, it confounds one thing with another. For if I intended to take you off by poison at supper, what could be more incongruous with my design, than to provoke you to rage by an obstinate contest and engagement, that you might have reason to refuse, as you did, my invitation to supper? But when, in your anger, you had refused, whether ought I to have taken pains to pacify you, that I might find another opportunity, since I had got the poison ready, or to pass over, as it were, from that design to another, namely, that of killing you with the sword, and on that same day, under pretence of feasting with you? If I thought that you declined supping with me, through fear for your life, how could I suppose that you would not, through the same fear, have declined drinking with me also.