§§ 13—15. Let me now tell you beforehand of the course which Conon will take in his reply. He will divert your attention from the facts and try to throw ridicule on the whole affair. He will tell you it was only the playful pleasantry that is common among young men about town. He will misrepresent us as just like his sons in character, and only different in being hard on other people. But the jury will be inflicting what I may call a fresh outrage upon me, if they are going to believe the defendant's bare assertion about our respective characters and to allow no weight to the evidence of our life and conduct.
εἰς πᾶν ἐλθὼν While πᾶν ποιεῖν and πάντα ποιεῖν are invariably used in the active sense of ‘straining every nerve,’ ‘leaving no stone unturned,’ είς πᾶν ἐλθεῖν and similar phrases have often (like εἰς τοὔσχατον ἐλθεῖν of the last section) the passive notion of being reduced to the utmost extremity, as in the present passage.
Thus (i) in active sense we have Xen. Cyr. V 4 § 26 “πάντα ἐποίουν πείθοντες τὸν βασιλέα” , Anab. III 1 § 18 “ἐπὶ πᾶν ἔλθοι, ὡς ἡμᾶς τὰ ἔσχατα αἰκισάμενος πᾶσιν άνθρώποις φόβον παράσχοι” , Soph. O. T. 265 “κάπὶ πάντ᾽ άφίξομαι ζητῶν τὸν αὐτόχειρα” .
(ii) in passive; Xen. Hell. VI 1 § 12 “οἶδα δέ, ὑφ᾽ οἵας δυνάμεως εἰς πᾶν ἀφίκετο βασιλεύς” , and V 4 § 29. Plato Symp. 194 A μάλ᾽ ἂν φοβοῖο καὶ ἐν παντὶ εἴης.
τῆς προσηκούσης ἐλάττω δίκην ‘I have entered on an action much below the merits of the case.’ Cf. latter half of § 1.
τί ποτ᾽ ἐστὶν ἃ ‘what is the import (sing.) of the points (plur.) that Conon will urge in his defence.’ τί...ἃ is more idiomatic than τίνα...ἅ, and is found in Or. 4 § 10; 19 § 288; 21 § 154; 36 § 28; 37 § 36.
ἀπὸ τῆς ὕβρεως—ἐρεῖν In apposition to λέγειν παρεσκευάσθαι, and loosely dependent on πέ- πυσμαι. A simpler construction might have been brought about by closing the sentence with παρεσκευάσθαι and then beginning afresh with some such sentence as the following; ἀπὸ γὰρ τῆς ὕβρεως καὶ τῶν πεπραγμένων τὸ πρᾶγμ᾽ ἀπαγαγών, εἰς γέλωτα καὶ σκώμματ᾽ ἐμβαλεῖν πειράσεται, καὶ ἐρεῖ κ.τ.λ., and in English translation this would give a clearer sense than any slavishly literal rendering of the more complex construction in the text. ‘He will divert your attention from the wanton outrage and the actual facts of the case; and will endeavour to turn the whole affair into mere jest and ridicule.’ That εἰς γέλωτα καὶ σκώμματ᾽ ἐμβαλεῖν is the construction (and not καὶ σκώμματ᾽ ἐμβαλεῖν πειράσεσθαι, καὶ ἐρεῖν), appears from (Dem.) Phil. 4 § 75 τὸ πρᾶγμα εἰς γέλωτα καὶ λοιδορίαν ἐμβαλόντες, cf. Aeschin. 1 § 135 τὸ πρᾶγμα εἰς ὄνειδος καὶ κινδύνους καθιστάς and εἰς γέλωτα καὶ λῆρόν τινα προτρεπόμενος ὑμᾶς, Lysias frag. 75, 1 εἰς σκώμματά τε αὑτοῖς καὶ ἀντιλογίαν καὶ ἔχθραν καὶ λοιδορίαν κατέστησαν.—Hesychius, referring perhaps to the present passage, has σκώμματα: λοιδορήματα γέλωτος χάριν.
