[4]
The laws, however, in accordance with which you sit as jurors, do not use this
language. They do indeed allow the production of a special plea when there has
been no contract at all at Athens or
for the Athenian market; but if a man admits that a contract was made, yet
contends that he has done everything that the contract requires, they bid him to
make a defence on the merits of the case, and not to make the plaintiff a
defendant.1 Not but that I hope to prove
from the facts of the case itself that this suit of mine is admissible.
1 As happened, of course, when a plea in bar of action was introduced.
Demosthenes. Demosthenes with an English translation by A. T. Murray, Ph.D., LL.D. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1939.
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