[13]
Well, gentlemen of the jury, you have heard the facts in detail. But Athenogenes will presently tell you that in law whatever agreements one man makes with another are binding.1 Yes, my friend, just agreements. But if they are unjust, the opposite is true: the law forbids that they be binding. I will quote the laws themselves to make this clearer to you. For you have reduced me to such a state of fear lest I shall be ruined by you and your craftiness that I have been searching the laws night and day and studying them to the neglect of everything else.
1 This law is quoted elsewhere,e.g., by Dem. 47.77.
Hyperides. Minor Attic Orators in two volumes, 2, with an English translation by J. O. Burtt, M.A. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1962.
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