Against Leptines

You will grasp the situation best if you will reason it out for yourselves in this way. Suppose at the present day a party of those in power at Pydna or Potidaea or any of those other places which are subject to Philip and hostile to you—

just as Thasos and Byzantium then were friendly to the Lacedaemonians and estranged from you—promised to hand them over to you in return for the same rewards that you gave to Ecphantus of Thasos and Archebius of Byzantium; and suppose some of these gentlemen here objected to their proposal on the ground that it would be monstrous if a select few of the resident aliens were to escape the public services; how would you deal with their arguments? Is it not certain that you would refuse to listen to such malignant pettifoggers? If so, then it is disgraceful that you should consider such an objection malignant when you are going to receive a benefit, but should lend an ear to it when it is proposed to revoke your gifts to former benefactors. Now let us pass to another argument.

The men who betrayed Pydna and the other places to Philip—what prompted them to injure us? Is it not obvious to everyone that it was the reward which they calculated on receiving from Philip for their services? Which, then, ought you to have chosen to do, Leptines? To induce our enemies, if you can, to give up honoring those who become their benefactors on the strength of injuries done to us, or to impose a law on us which takes away some part of the rewards which our own benefactors are enjoying? I fancy the former. But that I may not wander from the present point, take and read the decrees passed in honor of the Thasians and the Byzantines.

[The decrees are read]

You have heard the decrees, gentlemen of the jury. Perhaps some of the men named are no longer alive. But their deeds survive, since they were done once for all. It is fitting, therefore, to allow these inscriptions to hold good for all time, that as long as any of the men are alive, they may suffer no wrong at your hands, and when they die, those inscriptions may be a memorial of our national character, and may stand as proofs to all who wish to do us service, declaring how many benefactors our city has benefited in return.

Nor indeed would I have you forget this, men of Athens, that it is a most disgraceful thing to show and proclaim to all mankind that the misfortunes which these men endured for your sake have been confirmed to them for ever, while the grants which they received from you in recompense have been even now rescinded.

For it would have been far more fitting to mitigate their distress by letting them keep your gifts, than, while the distress remains, to rob them of your bounty. In Heaven’s name, I ask you, who is there that will choose to do you service with the prospect of instant punishment by your enemies, if he fails, and of a dubious gratitude from you, if he succeeds?