Against Leptines

and if you, on the contrary, have proposed a law that the people shall not be permitted to bestow on any man any part of what is their own, how can you be said to have read or understood the laws of Solon? You make the nation barren of would-be patriots by proclaiming unmistakably that those who benefit us shall gain nothing by it.

Again, there is another excellent law of Solon, forbidding a man to speak ill of the dead, even if he is himself defamed by the dead man’s children. You do not speak ill of our departed benefactors, Leptines; you do ill to them, when you blame one[*](i.e. of their descendants, whose demerits are no justification for cancelling a reward once given. But the Greek is not clear.) and assert that another is unworthy, though these charges have nothing to do with the dead men.[*](Or possibly, if ὦν is masculine, though the men thus charged have no connection with the dead.) Are you not very far from the intention of Solon?

Now I have been quite seriously informed that with regard to the absolute prohibition of all rewards,[*](Demosthenes here misrepresents the law, which only touched the immunities. Quite seriously is taken by some with prepared to use.) whatever a man’s services may be, our opponents are prepared to use some such argument as this. The Lacedaemonians, who are a well-organized state, and the Thebans grant no such reward to any of their citizens, and yet possibly there are some good men among them. In my opinion, men of Athens, all such arguments are provocative, and intended to persuade you to abolish the immunities, but just they are certainly not. For I am quite aware that the Thebans and the Lacedaemonians and ourselves do not observe the same laws and customs, nor the same form of government.

For in the first place, if this is their argument, they are about to do exactly what a man cannot do at Sparta—praise the laws of Athens or of any other state; nay, so far from that, he is obliged to praise, as well as do, whatever accords with his native constitution. Then again, though the Lacedaemonians do not hold with these customs, yet there are other honors at Sparta, which our citizens to a man would shrink from introducing here.

What, then, are those honors? Not to take each singly, I will describe one which comprises all the rest. Whenever a man for his good conduct is elected to the Senate, or Gerusia, as they call it, he is absolute master of the mass of citizens. For at Sparta the prize of merit is to share with one’s peers the supremacy in the State; but with us the people is supreme, and any other form of supremacy is forbidden by imprecations[*](At the opening of every meeting of the Assembly and of the Council a herald recited a curse on enemies of the State and on evil counsellors; see Dem. 19.70.) and laws and other safeguards, but we have crowns of honor and immunities and free maintenance and similar rewards, which anyone may win, if he is a good citizen.

And both these customs are right enough, the one at Sparta and the other here. Why? Because in an oligarchy harmony is attained by the equality of those who control the State, but the freedom of a democracy is guarded by the rivalry with which good citizens compete for the rewards offered by the people.