strong and well; and my mother rushed out, and the women cried and wailed as if a man had died in the house, so that some of the neighbours sent to ask what was the matter."
Conon and his associates may well have been a terror to peaceable citizens, if we may trust the following little sketch of their proceedings:—
"Many of you know the set. There's the grey-headed man, who all day long has a solemn frown on his brows, and wears a coarse mantle and single-soled shoes. But when they get together, they stick at no wickedness or disgraceful conduct. These are their fine and spirited sayings: 'Shan't we bear witness for one another?' 'Doesn't it become friends and comrades?' 'What will he bring against you that you're afraid of?' 'Some men say they saw him beaten?' We'll say, 'You never touched him.' 'Stripped of his coat?' We'll say, 'They began.' 'His lip was sewed up?' We'll say, 'Your head was broken.' Remember," solemnly adds the plaintiff, "I produce medical evidence; they do not—for they can get no evidence against me but what is furnished by themselves."
It is to be hoped that the jury did not laugh, but were persuaded by Demosthenes to make an example of such offenders. Blackguardism could hardly go further than to rob a man of his cloak, in addition to beating and kicking him. The Athenian rowdy, if Conon and his set were fair and average types of the genus, certainly deserved little mercy.
