As soon as the room was again quiet, Piso produced his documents and witnesses. After these had been canvassed by both parties, Piso proceeded to sum up for Cimon somewhat after this manner:
“It is a very easy thing to cry ‘forgery’ and ‘conspiracy.’ Anybody can do that, provided he has no conscience. I demand that my client be proved a forger and conspirator. Until that is done he has a legal right to be considered innocent.
“I happened to foresee what course the defense would take, and so was very glad to meet, yesterday, in the city, the Superintendent of Customs at Myos Hermos. This man, who has held his post for more than forty years, and is well known to the authorities here as reliable beyond question, has testified that all the parcels of goods which we claim to have been sent from the East were duly received and recorded at his port, and thence forwarded to Alexandria, and acknowledged by Malus as harbor-master. This settles the matter. Malus has received in good condition all the goods sent him—his sworn denials and charges of forgery to the contrary notwithstanding.
“Just here I call the attention of the Judges to a noteworthy fact: we did not send for this venerable witness from Myos Hermos. Though we thought of him and wanted him, we knew that we could not bring him in time for the trial. How, then, does it happen that he is here so opportunely? You have heard his explanation. He had no particular business of his own to draw him to the city, nor was he aware of the present suit; only he felt pressed and drawn to be here on a certain day by a mysterious influence which he was afraid to resist. It looks as if the very Heavens themselves were concerned to have justice done in this case.
“We have seen that Malus received, in good condition, all the goods sent. Only one question remains: Has he duly accounted for them all to his principal? The accounts which have been submitted to the Court—accounts apparently in his own handwriting, and which leading experts pronounce to be genuine—say No. They say that many parcels have never been received; that others came to hand in a damaged condition; that the duties on almost all received were much larger and the market-prices much smaller than the actual. But Malus declares that these accounts are not genuine: they are clever counterfeits, gotten up for the purpose of robbing and ruining him. The accounts which he actually sent were very different, and correctly represent duties and prices and everything. All this he simply asserts. He makes no attempt to prove his assertion: and I might well content myself with a simple counter-assertion. But I will not do this. He says that he has sent to the East, accounts correct in every particular, which have been suppressed. To this I answer that all such accounts, with remittances, imply as many acknowledgments from the receiver. No merchant here, least of all Malus, would go on sending accounts with moneys, year after year for thirty years, without getting acknowledgments for the same in the handwriting of the receiver or his authorized proxy. Let Malus produce such acknowledgments. He cannot do it. He has none to present.
“But Malus alleges that the case is one of contest of reputations. It is the assertion of a Nobody against the denial of a Somebody. The word of an unknown foreigner ought not to have any weight against the word of that eminent citizen and saint whom everybody in Alexandria knows, and knows to be full of riches and honors and virtues—the man who has never wronged anybody; has never ground the faces of the poor; has never sought to take advantage of Shaphan the Jew, or Athon the Phenician, or Epimetes the Greek, or Plautus the Roman, or anybody else under the wide heaven. Here, behind me, are a few of the people he has dealt with, ready to testify that Malus is not the sort of man to commit smuggling, to swear falsely, or even to be less than most merciful to those in his power! Would Malus like to hear from some of his victims?”
On this Sextus Flaccus rose, and slowly, with feeble voice and many a pause, proceeded to say that he was a victim, though not an innocent one. No doubt many were surprised to see him there, and still more surprised to see him in that part of the room. All Alexandria knew that he had long been intimate with Malus, and must know not a little of his principles and practices. Indeed he had, he was ashamed to say, to a certain extent shared in them. What sort of life he had lived, disgraceful to himself and his friends, was notorious. It was not necessary for him to specify—he would spare himself that pain. But this he must say, that in all his follies and sins he was always encouraged and often prompted by Malus. His intemperance, his violence, his enmities, had always been fanned by that man to the utmost.
Without any help from Malus, he had been very hostile to Cimon the Greek, and Aleph the Chaldean. The latter had hurt his pride, and so humbled him in the presence of others that he burned for revenge. Malus whetted his passion, and prompted him to measures for gratifying it which, bad as he was, he would not otherwise have thought of.
“Malus proposed,” continued Sextus, after pausing to recover breath, “that we make common cause against the two men. He told me frankly what reason he had to fear them, and dwelt artfully on the reasons I had for being revenged upon them. He tried to make me feel that we had a common interest in humbling and suppressing them. He plied me with wine. This and the violence of my passions for a while carried me away and made me a ready tool in his hands.
“But I have changed my mind. I have been at death’s door; and the light that came to me from behind it has shown me three things: my own folly and guilt, the utterly unscrupulous character of my tempter, and the thorough goodness of at least one of the men (and presumably of his friend and preceptor) whom we had been seeking to injure—may Heaven forgive me, as he has done! To him I owe my life and an opportunity to mend my ways. We had sought to dishonor him, and he knew it. We had done our worst to give him a felon’s name and fate, and he knew it. And yet he delivered me from my enemies, rescued me from death, nursed back my flickering life with the carefulness of a mother. I will tell the whole painful story, if Malus chooses to have me; but it would be to his disadvantage as well as to my shame. I propose, Heaven helping me, to mend my ways after thus publicly confessing the sin of them. I advise Malus to do the same.”