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170 to the market-place. We were near the Leocorium" (a small temple) "when we encountered them. As we came up, one of them rushed on my friend and held him. Conon and another tripped up my heels, and threw me into the mud, and jumped on me, and kicked me with such violence that my lip was cut through and my eye closed up. In this plight they left me, unable to rise or speak. As I lay I heard them use dreadful language, some of which I should be sorry to repeat to you. One thing you shall hear. It proves Conon's malice, and that he was the ringleader in the affair. He crowed, mimicking fighting-cocks when they have won a battle; and his companions bade him clap his elbows against his sides, like wings. I was afterwards found by some persons who came that way, and carried home without my cloak, which these men had carried off. When they got to the door, my mother and the maid-servants began crying and bewailing. I was carried with some difficulty to a bath; they washed me all over, and then showed me to the doctor."

It seems to have struck Demosthenes that possibly some of the jury would be inclined to laugh at this somewhat ludicrously pathetic picture.

"Will you laugh," he makes his client say, "and let Conon off, because he says we are a band of merry fellows who, in our adventures and amours, strike and break the neck of any one we please? I trust not. None of you would have laughed if you had been present when I was dragged and stripped and kicked, and carried to the home which I had left