At this moment a woman clad in black rushed down the center of the stage, weeping and wailing and clasping a small child to her breast.  An older woman, covered with rags and similarly shaken with sobs, followed her, both of them waving olive branches as they passed around the bier on which lay the covered bodies of the slain, and lifted up their voices in mournful outcry:  “For the sake of common humanity,” they wailed, “by all the universal laws of justice, be moved to pity by the undeserved death of these young men!  Give to a lonely wife and mother the comfort of vengeance!  Come to the aid of this unhappy child left fatherless in his tender years, and offer up the blood of the assassin at the shrine of law and order.”

Hereupon the presiding magistrate arose and addressed the people: 

“The crime for which the prisoner will later pay the full penalty, not even he attempts to deny.  But still another duty remains to be performed, and that is to find out who were his accomplices in this wicked deed; since it does not seem likely that one man alone could have overcome three others so young and strong as these.  We must apply torture to extract the truth; and since the slave who accompanied him has made his escape, there is no other alternative left us than to wring the names of his companions from the prisoner himself, in order that we may effectually relieve the public of all apprehension of danger from this desperate gang.”

Immediately, in accordance with the Greek usage, fire and the wheel were brought forth, together with all the other instruments of torture.  Now indeed my distress was not only increased but multiplied when I saw that I was fated to perish piecemeal.  But at this point the old woman, whose noisy lamentations had become a nuisance, broke out with this demand: 

“Honored citizens, before you proceed to torture the prisoner, on account of the dear ones whom he has taken from me, will you not permit the bodies of the deceased to be uncovered in order that the sight of their youth and beauty may fire you with a righteous anger and a severity proportioned to the crime?”

These words were received with applause, and straightway the magistrate commanded that I myself should with my own hand draw off the covering from the bodies lying on the bier.  In spite of my struggles and desperate determination not to look again upon the consequences of my last night’s deed, the court attendants promptly dragged me forward, in obedience to the judge’s order, and bending my arm by main force from its place at my side stretched it out above the three corpses.  Conquered in the struggle, I yielded to necessity, and much against my will drew down the covering and exposed the bodies.