Against Meidias

I suppose what tends to make everyone public-spirited and liberal with his money is the reflection that under a democracy each man has his share of just and equal rights. Now I, men of Athens, was deprived of those rights through this man’s acts, and, quite apart from the insults I endured, I was robbed of my victory. Yet I shall prove to all of you beyond a doubt that Meidias, without committing any outrageous offence, without insulting or striking me, had it in his power both to cause me trouble and to display his public spirit to you in a legitimate way, so that I should not be able to open my lips against him.

This is what he ought to have done, Athenians. When I offered myself to the Assembly as chorus-master for the tribe of Pandionis, he should have got up and offered himself as a rival master for his own tribe of Erechtheis he should have put himself on equal terms with me and spent his money as I was spending mine and tried in that way to wrest the victory from me; but not even as my rival should he have thus insulted and struck me.

As it was, he did not adopt this course, by which he might have done honor to the people, nor did he work off his high spirits in this way. No; I was his target, I who in my madness, men of Athens,—for it may be madness to engage in something beyond one’s power perhaps in my ambition, volunteered for chorus-master. He harassed me with a persecution so undisguised and so brutal that neither the sacred costumes nor the chorus nor at last even my own person was safe from his hands.

Now if there is anyone of you, Athenians, whose anger against Meidias falls short of a demand for his death, he is wrong. For it is neither just nor proper that the forbearance of the victim should contribute to the acquittal of a man who has put no check on his insolence. The latter you should punish as if the results of his conduct had been utterly irremediable; to the former you should show your goodwill by favouring his cause.[*](The argument is here condensed. Demosthenes imagines a juryman as saying to himself, Demosthenes did not retaliate; therefore the insult was not really intolerable. He replies, That only shows my forebearance. You ought to punish Meidias as severely as you would if I had shown that the insult was intolerable by hitting him back.)

You cannot retort that such acts have never had any serious consequences, but that I am now exaggerating the incident and representing it as formidable. That is wide of the mark. But all, or at least many, know what Euthynus, the once famous wrestler, a youngster, did to Sophilus the prize-fighter. He was a dark, brawny fellow. I am sure some of you know the man I mean. He met him in Samos at a gathering—just a private pleasure-party-and because he imagined he was insulting him, took such summary vengeance that he actually killed him.[*](The language is strangely colloquial, not to say slip-shod. Many editors think that we have here a passage which Demosthenes has not finally worked up. Yet the sudden drop in style might be effective, if only the meaning were more clear. Did the wrestler kill the prize-fighter or vice versa? The reader must take his choice. If ὁ τύπτων is retained, it will mean because the striker [E. or S.?] intended to insult him [S. or E.?]. The καί only makes confusion worse confounded.)It is a matter of common knowledge that Euaeon, the brother of Leodamas, killed Boeotus at a public banquet and entertainment in revenge for a single blow.

For it was not the blow but the indignity that roused the anger. To be struck is not the serious thing for a free man, serious though it is, but to be struck in wanton insolence. Many things, Athenians, some of which the victim would find it difficult to put into words, may be done by the striker—by gesture, by look, by tone; when he strikes in wantonness or out of enmity; with the fist or on the cheek. These are the things that provoke men and make them beside themselves, if they are unused to insult. No description, men of Athens, can bring the outrage as vividly before the hearers as it appears in truth and reality to the victim and to the spectators.

In the name of all the gods, Athenians, I ask you to reflect and calculate in your own minds how much more reason I had to be angry when I suffered so at the hands of Meidias, than Euaeon when he killed Boeotus. Euaeon was struck by an acquaintance, who was drunk at the time, in the presence of six or seven witnesses, who were also acquaintances and might be depended upon to denounce the one for his offence and commend the other if he had patiently restrained his feelings after such an affront, especially as Euaeon had gone to sup at a house which he need never have entered at all.