XXIX.  The transference of an accusation takes place when the accusation of that crime which is imputed to one by the opposite party is transferred to some other person or circumstance.  And that is done in two ways.  For sometimes the motive itself is transferred, and sometimes the act.  We may employ this as an instance of the transference of the motive:—­“The Rhodians sent some men as ambassadors to Athens.  The quaestors did not give the ambassadors the money for their expenses which they ought to have given them.  The ambassadors consequently did not go.  They are impeached.”  The charge brought against them is, “They ought to have gone.”  The denial is, “They ought not.”  The question is, “Whether they ought.”  The reason alleged is, “Because the money for their expenses, which is usually given to ambassadors from the public treasury, was not given to them by the quaestor.”  The argument brought to invalidate that reason is, “Still you ought to have discharged the duty which was entrusted to you by the public authority.”  The question for the decision of the judges is, “Whether, as the money which ought to have been supplied from the public treasury was not furnished to those men who were appointed ambassadors, they were nevertheless bound to discharge the duties of their embassy.”  In this class of inquiry, as in all the other kinds, it will be desirable to see if anything can be assumed, either from a conjectural statement of the case, or from any other kind of statement.  And after that, many arguments can be brought to bear on this question, both from comparison, and from the transference of the guilt to other parties.

But the prosecutor will, in the first place, if he can, defend the man through whose fault the accused person says that that action was done; and if he cannot, he will declare that the fault of the other party has nothing to do with this trial, but only the fault of this man whom he himself is accusing.  Afterwards he will say that it is proper for every one to consider only what is his own duty; and that if the one party did wrong, that was no reason for the other doing wrong too.  And in the next place, that if the other man has committed a fault, he ought to be accused separately as this man is, and that the accusation of the one is not to be mixed up with the defence of the other.

But when the advocate for the defence has dealt with the other arguments, if any arise out of other statements of the case, he will argue in this way with reference to the transference of the charge to other parties.  In the first place, he will point out to whose fault it was owing that the thing happened; and in the next place, as it happened in consequence of the fault of some one else, he will point out that he either could not or ought not to have done what the prosecutor says he ought:  that he could not, will be considered with reference to the particulars of expediency, in which the force of necessity is involved; that he