Against Timocrates

If any law already in force be rejected on show of hands, the presidents in whose term of office the voting takes place shall appoint the last of the three meetings of the Assembly for the consideration of laws so rejected. The commissioners who preside by lot at the Assembly are required, immediately after religious observances, to put the question respecting the sessions of the Legislative Committee, and respecting the fund from which their fees are to be paid. The Legislative Committee shall consist of persons who have taken the judicial oath.

If the Presidents do not convene the Assembly according to the written regulations, or if the commissioners do not put the question, each president shall forfeit one thousand drachmas of sacred money to Athena, and each commissioner shall forfeit forty drachmas of sacred money to Athena, and information thereof shall be laid before the Judges in such manner as when a man holds office being in debt to the treasury; and the Judges shall bring before the Court according to the law all persons against whom such information is laid; otherwise they shall not be raised to the Council of Areopagus, as obstructing the rectification of the statutes.

Before the meeting of the Assembly any Athenian citizen who wishes shall write down the laws proposed by him and exhibit the same in front of the Eponymous Heroes, to the end that the People may vote on the question of the time allowed to the Legislative Committee with due regard to the total number of laws proposed. Whosoever proposes a new statute shall write it on a white hoard and exhibit it in front of the Heroes on every day until the meeting of the Assembly. On the eleventh day of the month Hecatombaeon the people shall elect from the whole body of citizens five persons to speak in defence of laws proposed for repeal before the Legislative Committee.

These are all old-established laws, gentlemen of the jury; they have been repeatedly tested and found advantageous to you, and no man ever denied that they were well-conceived. Naturally; for there is nothing offensive or violent or oligarchical in their provisions; they order business to be done in a courteous, democratic spirit.

In the first place, they entrusted to you citizens the decision whether a new law is to be introduced or the existing laws judged satisfactory. Then, if your vote is in favour of introduction, they did not order immediate enactment, but appointed the next assembly but one, and even at that assembly, they do not permit you to legislate, but only to consider the terms on which the Legislative Committee shall sit. In the intervening time they instructed persons wishing to introduce laws to exhibit them in front of the Heroes, so that anyone who chooses may inspect them, and, if he discovers anything injurious to the public interest, may inform you and have time to speak against the laws.

Now, of all these rules the defendant Timocrates has not observed one. He never exhibited his law; he gave no one a chance to read it and oppose it; nor did he wait for any of the dates appointed by statute. The assembly at which your vote was taken fell on the eleventh of Hecatombaeon, and he introduced his law on the twelfth, the very next day, although it was a feast of Cronos and the Council therefore stood adjourned; for he had contrived, with the help of persons whose intentions are unfriendly to you, to get by decree a sitting of the Legislative Committee, on an excuse afforded by the Panathenian Festival.

I wish to read to you the decree that was adopted on division, to show you that the whole business was managed by collusion, and nothing was left to chance.—Take the decree, sir, and read it to the jury.

Decree

During the first presidency, namely, that of the Pandionid Tribe, and on the eleventh day of that presidency, it was moved by Epicrates that, in order that the sacrifices may be offered, that provision may be adequate, and that any lack of funds for the Panathenian Festival may be made good, the Presidents of the Pandionid Tribe do tomorrow set up a Legislative Committee, and that such Legislative Committee do consist of one thousand and one citizens who have taken the oath, and that the Council co-operate therewith in legislative business.

Observe, as the decree is read, how ingeniously the man who drafted it, under a pretext of finance and the urgency of the Festival, cancelled the date fixed by statute, and put in his own date,—that they should legislate to-morrow. I protest that his intention was, not that something belonging to the Festival should be done as handsomely as possible, for in fact there was nothing left to be done, and no financial deficiency to be made good; but that this law of theirs, the subject of the present trial, might be enacted and come into force without any living man having wind of it beforehand or offering opposition.

Here is the proof: when the Legislative Committee was in session, nobody introduced any law, good or bad, in respect of the business specified, that is, of financial provision for the Panathenian Festival, but this man Timocrates coolly and quietly proceeded to legislate about matters that lay outside the terms of the decree, and were forbidden by statute. He assumed that the date specified in the decree was more authoritative than the date prescribed by law; and, while you were all holidaymaking, and though there is a standing law that at such a time we shall do one another no wrong either in private or public life nor transact business that does not concern the Festival, he was not in the least afraid of making an exhibition of himself by doing wrong, not to this or that person, but to the whole community.

Yet was it not outrageous that, well knowing that the statutes which you heard read just now were still in force, well knowing also that another law declares that no decree, even though in itself constitutional, shall have higher authority than a statute, he should draft and propose to you a new law, in virtue of a decree that, as he was fully aware, had been moved in defiance of the laws?

Was it not atrocious that, when the State had granted to us individually security against any disagreeable or offensive treatment at that time, by declaring a religious holiday, the State itself should have obtained no such immunity from Timocrates, but, during that very holiday, should have been subjected to most grievous ill-treatment? How, indeed, could any private person ill-treat the State more gravely than by subverting the laws by which the State is administered?

That Timocrates has done nothing that he ought to have done, nothing that the laws expressly enjoin, may be concluded from consideration of what I have already said; and before long you shall be satisfied, point by point, that he transgressed not merely in so far as he ignored the dates fixed by statute, and entirely annulled your right of deliberate consideration, by attempting to legislate during the holiday, but also in this respect,—that the law he introduced is inconsistent with all existing statutes.—But first take and read the statute I have here, which expressly forbids the introduction of any conflicting law, and authorizes an indictment if such a law should have been introduced.

The Law

It shall not he lawful to repeal any established law except at a Legislative Committee; and then any Athenian citizen may move for such repeal only on condition that he proposes a law to be substituted for the law so repealed. The Commissioners shall take a show of hands upon such laws, in the first instance upon the established law, whether it appear to be advantageous to the Athenian democracy or not, and afterwards upon the law proposed. And whichever law is approved on division by the Legislative Committee shall then be operative. It shall not be lawful to introduce any law contrary to existing laws; and if any person having repealed any existing law proposes in substitution another law that is either disadvantageous to the Athenian democracy or contrary to any established law, an indictment shall lie against him according to the law made and provided in the case of the proposer of a disadvantageous law.

You have heard the law. Our city possesses many excellent laws, but in my judgement there is not one that has been framed in a more praiseworthy manner than this. Observe in what an equitable and thoroughly democratic spirit it is enacted. It forbids the introduction of anything repugnant to existing laws, except after abrogation of the law previously enacted. What is the purpose? First, to enable a jury to give a just and conscientious verdict;

for, if there were two inconsistent laws, and if two litigants were contending in this court, whether in a public or a private dispute, and if each of them, by citing a different law, claimed your verdict, you could not of course give judgement in favour of both of them,—that is absurd,—nor could you give your verdict for either without breaking your oath, because such a decision contravenes the opposite law, which is equally valid.

As a safeguard against such a dilemma the lawgiver made this provision in your interest. He also wished to make you the established guardians of the law, well knowing that the other safeguards provided by him may be evaded in many ways. The advocates[*](Five advocates were officially appointed to defend in the court of Heliasts any law which it was proposed to repeal.) appointed by you, for instance, may be persuaded to hold their peace. He enjoined the exhibition of a proposed law that we may all have knowledge of it beforehand; but it may happen that it is unobserved by those who would oppose it if they knew in time, and that the rest read it without attention.

But, it may be objected, it is open to anyone to indict the law, as I have done on this occasion. Well, even in that event the State is outwitted if a man gets the prosecutor to stand aside. What, then, is the only honest and trustworthy safeguard of the law? You, the common people. It is beyond the power of mortal man to take away from you the right to determine and to approve the best policy. No man, by getting you to stand aside, or by bribing you, can ever induce you to substitute a bad law for a good one.

Therefore the lawgiver anticipates every avenue of iniquity, thwarting the plans and forbidding the advance of men whose intentions are hostile to you. All these precautions, so admirably and so righteously enacted, Timocrates has subverted and obliterated, so far as in him lay; he has introduced a law repugnant to all or nearly all the existing statutes, without reading any for comparison, without repealing any, without leaving you the right of choice, without taking any other of the steps that he was required to take.