“Go back to your seat, Philopator, that’s the best thing to do.”
The orator followed the good advice and, trembling from head to foot, slunk back to his place, where he cowered making himself as small as possible.
Polycles signed to Lycon to seat himself behind the bema, where he was concealed from every one; then he himself stepped forward, apparently as calm as when moving among the guests in front of his house.
“Fellow citizens,” he said, “I am no professional orator like Philopator yonder, but perhaps you will listen to me, since I wish to speak to you of a man who came to us in an evil time and who, within a few days, has become dear to the whole city.”
“Speak, speak!” shouted numerous voices.
“Much evil and much good can be told of him. I will begin with the evil.... You think Lycon is an Athenian—he is not. You think Lycon is a citizen—he is not that either. He is a freedman, who a little more than a month ago was a slave.”
This statement was followed by silence so profound that no one would have believed himself to be in the same place and among the same men who a short time before were yelling at Philopator. Amid the breathless expectation of the throng, external surroundings suddenly seemed like a revelation from another world. The wind was heard sighing through the tree-tops and the swallows twittering in the air. Many on the back seats rose and held their hands behind their ears, that they might not lose a single word.
Polycles did not spare Lycon, but told the people that his dead friend Simonides a few years before had bought a young slave named Zenon, who, after being branded for theft, had fled to Poseidon’s altar. For a long time Zenon had served his new master well; but when he saw a man from Hypata pay Simonides a large sum of money, he ran away with it during the night.
A movement passed through the assembly, one man muttered to another. Polycles foresaw a fresh storm.
“Friends and fellow citizens,” he said in a jesting tone; “we know each other, so I shall not ask you to keep quiet. On the contrary, I will beg you to chatter and yell to your hearts’ content, in order to have it over the sooner.”