Against Timocrates

As Heaven is my witness, gentlemen of the jury, I believe Androtion became the victim of this arrogant, overbearing temper, not by accident, but by the visitation of the gods, to the end that, as the mutilators of the statue of Victory perished by their own hands,[*](Nothing is known of this incident.) so these men should perish by litigation among themselves, and should either make tenfold restitution, as the laws direct, or be cast into prison.

I should like to make an observation about his law which occurred to my mind while I was speaking about these matters,—something quite out of the common, indeed surprisingly so. The defendant, gentlemen of the jury, has proposed that the penalty inflicted upon farmers of taxes, if they did not pay their dues, should be in accordance with the earlier statutes, in which the penalty provided is imprisonment and double restitution for men who, in consequence of losses on their contract, might possibly do the State a wrong unintentionally. On the other hand, he abolishes imprisonment for men who steal the property of the State and rob the temples of the Goddess.—If you tell us, Timocrates, that the latter are guilty of a less serious offence than the former, you must admit that you are out of your senses; and if you think their offence more serious, as indeed it is, and yet release them and refuse to release the others, is it not evident that you have sold your services to these men for a bribe?

Another remark worth making, gentlemen of the jury, is that you are far more magnanimous than the politicians. Anyhow you do not repeal the harsh enactments made against the common people,—against those, for instance, who take fees from both parties, or attend the Assembly or sit on a jury while in debt to the treasury, or do anything else forbidden by the laws,—although you know that any man who commits one of these offences may do so because he is poor. You do not enact laws to give liberty of transgression, but rather to take it away. They, on the other hand, make laws to rescue from punishment persons guilty of the most infamous and outrageous misconduct.

And then in private they talk insultingly about you, as though they were superior persons, though they are really behaving like ill-conditioned, ungrateful servants. Servants who have been manumitted, you know, gentlemen of the jury, are never grateful to their masters for their liberation, but hate them more bitterly than they hate anyone else, as sharing in the secret of their former servitude. In the same spirit politicians are not satisfied with having risen from poverty to affluence at the expense of the City, but calumniate the common people,—because the common people know what their style of life was when they were young and poor.

But it would perhaps, as he may suggest, have been a great shame for Androtion to be sent to prison, or for Glaucetes, or Melanopus. No, indeed, gentlemen of the jury! It will be a far greater shame if an injured and insulted commonwealth shall exact no retribution for the Goddess or for itself. Does not imprisonment run in Androtion’s family? Why, you know yourselves that his father often went to jail for five years at a stretch; and then he was not discharged—he ran away.

Or has he earned forgiveness by his conduct in youth? Why, he deserves imprisonment for that conduct just as much as for his embezzlements. Do you mean because he frequented the market-place before he was qualified, and with his own hands haled men of respectable life from the market-place to the jail? But there is Melanopus, you say, and what a dreadful thing it would be if Melanopus were committed to prison today!

Well, about his father I will say nothing disrespectful; though I could tell you a long story about thieving,—however, so far as I am concerned, let his father be worthy of all the compliments that Timocrates may lavish upon him. But suppose that the son of this virtuous father was himself a rascal and a thief; suppose that he once paid a fine of three talents on conviction for treason; suppose that, after he had sat in the Allied Congress,[*](The Second Athenian Confederacy, as reformed in 377.) the court found him guilty of embezzlement, and ordered him to make tenfold restitution; suppose that he played false when he went on embassy to Egypt; suppose that he swindled his own brothers—does he not deserve imprisonment all the more if his father was virtuous, and he is what he is? For my part, I fancy that, if Laches[*](The father of Melanopus; probably not the well-known general who fell at Mantinea, 418.) really was virtuous and patriotic, he should himself have sent his degenerate son to jail for implicating him in such infamous scandals. However, let us pass Melanopus by, and fix our gaze upon Glaucetes.

Was not he the man who first ran away to Deceleia, and, with Deceleia as his base, overran and harried your country? But you all know that. Was it not he who scrupulously paid to the Spartan governor at that place tithes due upon your wives and children and all the rest of his booty;

and yet, when you had honored him with the office of ambassador, robbed the Goddess at Athens of her tithe of the plunder he took from your enemies? Was it not he who, being appointed treasurer at the Acropolis, stole from that place those prizes of victory which our ancestors carried off from the barbarians, the throne with silver feet, and Mardonius’s scimitar, which weighed three hundred darics? These exploits, however, are so celebrated that they are known to everybody. But in everything else is he not a man of violence? Aye, he has no equal for that.

Is it right, then, that you should deal tenderly with any one of them, and disregard for their sakes the tithes of Athena or the double repayment of public moneys? Is it right to leave unpunished the man who is exerting himself to save them? What is there, gentlemen, to prevent everybody turning knave, if knavery is to be profitable? Nothing that I can see.

You must punish crime, not encourage it by your own teaching. Do not let them make a grievance of going to prison with your money in their pockets, but bring them under the yoke of law. People convicted under the alien acts do not think themselves aggrieved when they are kept in yonder building[*](οἴκημα is a common euphemism for δεσμωτήριον. There seems to have been only one prison at Athens, and this passage suggests that it was in view of the Agora; but τούτῳ is not necessarily deictic.) until the trial for false evidence is over; they simply stay there without expecting to get the freedom of the streets by putting in bail.

The commonwealth, having decided to distrust them, did not choose to be cheated of retribution by the process of putting in bail, but preferred that they should stay in a place where many genuine Athenians have sojourned. Yet. people have been imprisoned there before now both for debt and on judgement, and have taken it quietly. Perhaps it is rather invidious to mention names, but I cannot help giving you a list for comparison with the men before you.

I will not mention very ancient instances, or any earlier than the archonship of Eucleides[*](403 B.C.); but I must observe that many men, who in their own generation were highly esteemed for their earlier conduct, were nevertheless most severely treated by the People for the offences of their later life. The commonwealth was not content with a period of honesty followed by knavery, but expected uninterrupted honesty in public dealings. The previous honesty of such a person was not, in their view, attributable to innate virtue; it was part of a scheme to attract confidence.

But after the archonship of Eucleides, gentlemen of the jury, first, you all remember that the well-known Thrasybulus of Colyttus was twice imprisoned and condemned at both his trials before the Assembly; and yet he was one of the heroes of the march from Phyle and Peiraeus.[*](To end the rule of the Thirty Tyrants.) Then there was Philepsius of Lamptra. Next take Agyrrhius of Colyttus, a good man, a liberal politician, and an ardent defender of popular rights;

and yet even he admitted that the laws must be as binding upon him as upon people without influence, and he stayed in that building for many years, until he had repaid the money in his possession which was adjudged to be public property; nor did Callistratus, who was in power, and who was his nephew, try to make new laws to meet his particular case. Or take Myronides; he was the son of that Archinus who occupied Phyle, and whom, after the gods, we have chiefly to thank for the restoration of popular government, and who had achieved success on many occasions both as statesman and as commander.

In spite of their merits, these men all submitted to the laws. Again, the treasurers of Athena and of the other gods, during whose term the Inner Treasury was burned down, were lodged in yonder building pending their trial; so too were the persons suspected of the corn-market frauds, and many others, gentlemen of the jury,—all better men than Androtion.

Then if it was right that for them the old-established laws should be operative, and that they should be punished in accordance with the existing laws, can it be right that for the sake of Androtion, Glaucetes, and Melanopus, a brand-new statute should be made,—for men who have been found guilty and condemned by verdict in pursuance of old-established laws, and who are declared to be detaining sacred and public moneys? Will not Athens be a laughing-stock if she is discovered enacting laws for the deliverance of temple robbers?

So I should say. Then do not tolerate any insult to yourselves or to the State. Remember how, no longer ago than the archonship of Evander, you put Eudemus of Cydathenaeum to death, because you held him to have proposed an objectionable statute; and that you were within an ace also of putting to death Philip, the son of Philip the ship-owner, but, by a very small majority, you accepted his own counter-assessment of the penalty, and made him pay a very heavy fine. Treat the defendant today in the same spirit of severity. And there is another consideration for you to bear in mind,—how injuriously you would have been treated by Timocrates, if he alone had been your ambassador. I really believe that there is nothing from which such a fellow would have kept his hands. Have regard also to the disposition of the man; for the law which he has had the audacity to propose is significant of his character.

I should like, gentlemen of the jury, to give you a description of the method of legislation among the Locrians. It will do you no harm to hear an example, especially one set by a well-governed community. In that country the people are so strongly of opinion that it is right to observe old-established laws, to preserve the institutions of their forefathers, and never to legislate for the gratification of whims, or for a compromise with transgression, that if a man wishes to propose a new law, he legislates with a halter round his neck. If the law is accepted as good and beneficial, the proposer departs with his life, but, if not, the halter is drawn tight, and he is a dead man.

In very truth they are not bold enough to propose new laws, but punctually obey the old ones. And, during quite a long series of years, we are told, gentlemen of the jury, that they have enacted only one new statute. They had a law in that country that, if any one destroyed his neighbor’s eye, he must submit to the destruction of one of his own eyes; and there was no alternative of a fine. The story goes that a man, whose enemy had only one eye, threatened to knock that one eye out.