Against Meidias

There are in Greece men so mild and humane in disposition that though they have often been wronged by you, and though they have inherited a natural hostility towards you, yet they permit no insult to be offered even to the men whom they have bought for a price and keep as their slaves. Nay, they have publicly established this law forbidding such insult, and they have already punished many of the transgressors with death.

If the barbarians heard these words and understood their import, do you not think that they would unanimously appoint you their protectors?[*](πρόξενος, here loosely used, is technically a man chosen by a foreign state as its representative in his own native city (nearly a consul in the modern sense).) As regards this law then, which is so well esteemed among the Greeks and would be well esteemed among the barbarians also, consider what penalty he who transgresses it will have to pay before he has paid his deserts.

Now if I had not been chorus-master, men of Athens, when I was thus maltreated by Meidias, it is only the personal insult that one would have condemned; but under the circumstances I think one would be justified in condemning also the impiety of the act. You surely realize that all your choruses and hymns to the god are sanctioned, not only by the regulations of the Dionysia, but also by the oracles, in all of which, whether given at Delphi or at Dodona, you will find a solemn injunction to the State to set up dances after the ancestral custom, to fill the streets with the savour of sacrifice, and to wear garlands.