from the gods and from your ancestors, and you apply the same standards as they when voting for conviction; secondly avenge the dead man; and at the same time rescue me, for I am left all alone. [4] For you are my nearest kin. The ones who should by rights have acted as the dead man’s avengers and as my allies have proved to be the dead man’s killers and have become my adversaries. What allies is a man to seek, where else will he go for refuge, except to you and to justice? [5] I am amazed at my brother. Whatever does he mean in appearing as my opponent? Does he think that piety consists in not abandoning his mother? Personally, I think it far more impious to abandon the vengeance due to the dead man, especially as his death was unplanned and unintentional on his part, while the murder was deliberate and intentional on hers. [6] And he cannot claim that he knows for certain that his mother did not kill our father. For he refused the one source of sure knowledge, from torture, while he welcomed sources which could not provide information. Yet he should have been eager, and this was the substance of my challenge, to investigate what really happened. [7] For if the slaves did not support me, he could have offered a vigorous defence against me based on certain knowledge and his mother would have been rid of this charge. But where he refused to put the facts to the test, how can he possibly have knowledge of matters he refused to ascertain? [8] What defence will he offer, I ask myself. For he was well aware that torture meant she could not be saved; he thought her salvation lay in refusing the torture. They believed that the facts could be suppressed by this means. So surely his oath that he knows for certain cannot be true, if he refused to obtain sure information when I was willing to use the fairest test, the torture, in this matter? [9] For to start with I offered to put to the torture his slaves, who knew that this woman, their mother, had also plotted earlier to kill my father with drugs, that my father had caught her in the act and that she made no denial beyond claiming that she was administering them not to kill him but as a love potion. [10] This was my reason for wishing to put them to the test in this way. I put accusations against this woman in writing and invited my opponents themselves to act as questioners in my presence, so that the slaves would not be forced to answer questions put by me; instead I was satisfied if the questions in my document were used. (And it is right that this should count as evidence for me, that I am pursuing my father’s killer properly and