Arbitrators

The arbitrators are those who are in their sixtieth year.

It is permitted also to lay an information against the arbitrators, if anyone is wronged by an arbitrator;

It is not permitted to use either laws or challenges or testimonies except those that the arbitrator has placed in the jars.

He had the effrontery, moreover, to make before the arbitrator the most audacious assertions, that my father kept the tenth day after birth for him, just as for me, and gave him the name Mantitheus;

but finally, when there was no longer room for evasion, he allowed the arbitrators to give judgement against him by default, and then, in Heaven’s name, see what he did— he got this judgement for non-appearance set aside, entitling himself Boeotus.

At the first we had Solon, of Erchia, registered as arbitrator, and submitted to him for decision the claims we advanced against each other.

and when I had previously referred the suit about the name to Xenippus, whom he had proposed as arbitrator, he forbade him to render any decision.

could he rely on anything else to meet this charge than that, because of their mother’s oath and the decision of the arbitrators, my father was forced to abide by the award?

But if he was unaware of this situation, and having this proof, as he will now say, made no preparation against so serious a danger, surely when I had left my sick bed and summoned him, he would at our first meeting before the arbitrator have shown himself ready to deliver up the slaves.

Since, however, he was convicted on all these points before the arbitrator, just as he is now, and proved manifestly guilty of all the charges against him, he puts into the box a false deposition, and writes at the head of it as witnesses the names of people whom I think you will know well when you hear them— Diotimus, son of Diotimus, of Icaria, Archebiades, son of Demoteles, of Halae, Chaeretimu …

Yet, although the release was thus given in the presence of numerous witnesses, and although the law manifestly absolves us, these men have come to such a pitch of shamelessness and audacity, that, when fourteen years have elapsed from the time when they gave my father a release, and twenty-two years after they had first indicted him, when my father was now dead, with whom the settlement had been …

for this is what he undertook to say before the arbitrator also.

after that, read the deposition of the arbitrators, that they may see that Spudias has received even far more than I, and that Leocrates made complaint regarding this, and that the arbitrators rendered this decision.

The arbitrators said, that if they could effect a compromise without putting themselves under an oath, they would do so;

We, just as though we had suffered only slight injuries, agreed to this and submitted the matter to four arbitrators, two of whom were nominated by us and two by our opponents.

The latter told us that, if we were to entrust them to decide the rights of the case, they would refuse to act as arbitrators, for they did not wish to quarrel with either party;

They decided that for the future we must behave in a proper manner towards one another, both in word and in deed, and they obliged both parties to swear at the altar that they would do so;

They, after having sworn an oath to us at the altar of Aphrodite at Cephale that they would decide what was to our common interest, gave as their verdict that we should give up what my opponent claimed and hand it over to him as a free gift;

for I have so lived all my life till now that no man either under the oligarchy or under the democracy has ever charged me with any offense, whether of violence or injury, nor will any man be found to have sat either as arbitrator or as judge upon my actions.

And you will observe that those who live upon your contracts and the litigation connected with them are all but domiciled in the courts of law, while no one has ever seen me either at the council-board, or at the preliminaries, or in the courts, or before the arbitrators;