Against Timocrates

Here is a man who is going to inherit disfranchisement, if anything happens to his father, and yet does not think proper to pay the debt, but prefers to pocket the profit of his meanness so long as his father lives. Is such a man likely to keep his hands off anything?—For your own father you have no compassion; you do not think him ill-used because, while you are getting your pickings and making your profits out of the taxes you used to collect, out of the decrees you move, out of the laws you introduce, he is losing his citizen-rights for lack of a trifling sum of money. And yet you call yourself a compassionate man!

—Ah, but he was a good manager for his sister. Why, if he had committed no other crime, he deserves destruction on that account alone. He has not given her in marriage, he has sold her. An enemy of yours from Corcyra, one of the faction now in power there, used to lodge at his house whenever he came here on embassy, and wanted to have his sister,—I will not say on what terms. He took the man’s money, and he has given him the girl; and she is in Corcyra to this day.

A man who pretends to have given his sister in marriage, but has really sold her for export; a man who supports his father’s old age in the manner you know; a toad-eater who drafts decrees and does political jobs for hire,—now that you have caught him, will you not make an end of him? If not, we shall think, men of Athens, that you like lawsuits and vexations, and that you do not want to be quit of scoundrels.

I am sure that you would all agree, if asked, that all evil-doers ought to be punished; but I will try to satisfy you that this malefactor in particular deserves punishment for introducing a law detrimental to the common people. A thief, or a cutpurse, or any rogue of that sort, in the first place really injures only the man who encounters him; it is out of his power to strip everybody, or steal everybody’s property; and in the second place, he brings disgrace on no one’s reputation or manner of life but his own.

But if a man introduces a law by which unlimited license and immunity is granted to those who seek to defraud their fellow-citizens, he is guilty in respect of the whole city, and he brings disgrace upon everybody; for an infamous statute, when ratified, is a discredit to the government that enacted it and an injury to everyone who lives under it. Will you not, then, punish, when you have caught him, a man who is doing his utmost to injure you, and to pollute you with infamy? If not, what excuse will you have?

The best way to ascertain with what far-reaching designs he has framed his law, and how inimical those designs are to the established constitution, is to reflect that this is just the way that all conspirators begin, when they are trying to overthrow democracy by innovations,—they first of all release all who were formerly by law suffering this penalty for some offence.

Does not this man, then, deserve, if possible, not one but three sentences of death, because, standing by himself, and of course with no expectation of crushing you, but rather of meeting his own doom in this court, if you do justice as you ought, he nevertheless imitated that crime, and attempted to release men whom the tribunals have imprisoned, by his impudent enactment that if the penalty of imprisonment has already been inflicted, or if you hereafter inflict it, upon any man, that man shall be discharged from prison?

Suppose that in a moment’s time you were to hear an outcry hard by this court, and suppose that you were told that the jail had been thrown open and that the prisoners were escaping, there is not a man, however old or however apathetic, who would not rally to the rescue to the utmost of his power. And if someone came forward and informed you that the man who had let them out was the defendant, he would be incontinently arrested and executed without a hearing.

Well, men of Athens, you hold in your power today this man, who has not done that deed in secret, but after beguiling and deceiving you has openly enacted a law that does not merely throw open but demolishes the prison, and that includes in that destruction the courts of justice as well. For of what use are either courts or prisons, if persons sentenced to imprisonment are set free, and if you are to get no benefit from any such sentence henceforward?

You ought also to consider this point, that many Hellenic nations have often resolved by vote to adopt your laws; and in this you take an honorable pride, naturally; for there seems to me to be truth in an observation once made, as we are told, in this court, that all wise men regard laws as the character of the State. Therefore we should take pains that they be accounted as good as possible, and we should punish those who debase and pervert them; for, if they are impaired by your neglect, you will lose that high distinction, and will create an unfavorable reputation for your city.

If you are justified in praising Solon and Draco, although you can credit neither of them with any public service except that they enacted beneficial and well-conceived statutes, it is surely right that you should visit men whose enactments are contrary to the spirit of those lawgivers with indignation and chastisement. But as to Timocrates I know that he brought in this law chiefly for his private advantage, because he felt that many of his political acts in your city deserve imprisonment.

I would also like to repeat to you a saying attributed to Solon, when he was prosecuting a man who had carried an undesirable law. We are told that, after stating his other charges, he observed that in all, or nearly all, states there is a law that the penalty for any man who debases the currency is death. He proceeded to ask the jury whether they thought that a just and good law;

and when the jury replied that they did, he said that in his opinion money had been invented by private persons for private transactions, but laws were the currency[*](The play upon words between νόμος law and νόμισμα coin is impossible to render in English.) of the State; and therefore if a man debased that currency, and introduced counterfeit, the jury had graver reason to abhor and punish that man than one who debased the currency of private citizens.

By way of proof that it is a more heinous crime to debase laws than silver coinage, he added that many states that use without concealment silver alloyed with copper and lead are safe and sound and suffer no harm thereby; but that no nation that uses bad laws or permits the debasement of existing laws has ever escaped the consequence. Now that is the accusation to which Timocrates stands open today, and he may justly receive from you the punishment that is adequate to his guilt.

While, therefore, you should be indignant with every man who brings in shameful and wicked laws, your indignation ought chiefly to be directed against those who vitiate the laws upon which depends the greatness, or the weakness, of the commonwealth. And what are they? The laws that avenge you upon evil-doers, and all the laws that confer certain honors on the well-conducted.

If all men alike were zealous to serve the community, because they had become ambitious of the honors and rewards of such service, and if all were to recoil from noxious acts, through fear of the pains and penalties enacted for malefactors, could anything prevent our commonwealth from becoming very great? Does not Athens possess more war galleys than any other Hellenic city? Is she not rich in infantry and cavalry, in revenue, in military positions, in harbors? And how are those possessions preserved and consolidated? By the laws; for they are profitable to the community only so long as our public conduct conforms to the laws.

If conditions were reversed, if there were no recompense for the virtuous, if evil-doers were to enjoy all the immunity that Timocrates has sought to enact, what utter confusion would be the natural result! For you may be quite sure that from these possessions that I have enumerated, even if they were twice as great as they now are, you would not then get an atom of advantage. Therefore the defendant is proved to be striving to do you wrong in respect of that law by which punishments are provided for would-be criminals.

For all the reasons I have set before you, it is incumbent upon you to show your resentment, to chastise these men, and to make them an example to others. To be lenient to such offenders, or to convict them and then inflict a light penalty, is to habituate and train the greatest possible number to do you wrong.