evacuation of blood occurred at a time when I was in great pain and already despaired of, I might even have died from suppuration. As it was, it was this that saved me, the evacuation of blood. To prove that in this too I am telling the truth, and that I was subjected to illness such as to reduce me to a desperate condition, as a result of the blows I received from these men, read the doctor’s deposition and that of the people who visited me. Depositions [13] So the fact that the blows I received were not slight or insignificant but that I found myself in extreme danger because of the outrageous behaviour and the violence of these people, and so the action I have brought is far less serious than they deserve, this has I think been made clear to you on many counts. And I imagine that some of you are wondering what on earth Konon will dare to say in reply to this. Now I want to warn you about the argument I am informed he has contrived; he will attempt to divert the issue away from the outrage of what was done and reduce it to laughter and ridicule. [14] And he will say that there are many individuals in the city, the sons of decent men, who in the playful manner of young people have given themselves titles, and they call some ‘Ithyphallics’, others ‘Down-and-outs’; that some of them love courtesans and have often suffered and inflicted blows over a courtesan, and that this is the way of young people. As for my brothers and myself, he will misrepresent all of us as drunken and violent but also as unreasonable and vindictive. [15] Personally, judges, though I have been angered by the treatment I have received, my indignation and feeling of having been outraged would be no less, if I may say so, if these statements about us by Konon here are regarded as the truth and your ignorance is such that each man is taken for whatever he claims or his neighbour alleges him to be, and decent men get no benefit at all from their normal life and habits. [16] We have not been seen either drunk or behaving violently by anyone in the world, nor do we think we are behaving unreasonably if we demand to receive satisfaction under the laws for the wrongs done to us. We agree that his sons are ‘Ithyphallics’ and ‘Down-and-outs’, and I for my part pray to the gods that this and all else of the sort may recoil upon Konon and his sons. [17] For these are the men who initiate each other into the rites of Ithyphallos and commit the sort of acts which decent people find it deeply shameful even to speak of, let alone do.