Against Timocrates

I suppose that you are all satisfied that he is amenable to the indictment, as having introduced a law that contravenes existing statutes; but, to show you the character of the laws he has contravened and of the law he has introduced, the clerk will read to you, first his new law, and then the other laws to which it is repugnant.

Law of Timocrates

During the first presidency, namely, that of the Pandionid Tribe, and on the twelfth day of that presidency, it was moved by Timocrates that, if the additional penalty of imprisonment has been or shall hereafter be inflicted in pursuance of any law or decree upon any person in debt to the treasury, it shall be competent for him or for any other person on his behalf to nominate as sureties for the debt such persons as shall be approved by vote of the Assembly, on an undertaking to pay in full the amount in which he was indebted. The Commissioners are required to put the question whensoever any debtor wishes to nominate sureties.

The debtor who has given sureties shall be released from the penalty of imprisonment on payment to the State of the money, in respect of which he gave such sureties; but if at the time of the ninth presidency neither he nor his sureties shall have paid in the money, the man who gave sureties shall be imprisoned and the property of the sureties shall be confiscated. But in the case of tax-farmers, their sureties, and their collectors, and of the lessees of leasable revenues and their sureties, the State may exact payment according to the established laws. If any man incur debt during the ninth presidency he shall pay in full during the ninth or the tenth presidency of the next ensuing year.

You have heard the law, and I beg you to bear in mind this phrase, if the additional penalty of imprisonment has been or shall hereafter be inflicted, and also that he excepts from the operation of his law tax-farmers and lessees and their sureties. The law as a whole, but those provisions more especially, is contrary to all existing statutes. That you will recognize when you have listened to the actual laws.—Read.

The Law

Moved by Diocles: that laws enacted under democratic government before the archonship of Eucleides and all laws that were enacted during the archonship of Eucleides and are on record shall be in force. Laws enacted after the archonship of Eucleides or laws that shall hereafter be enacted shall be in force as from the day of their several enactment, unless a clause be appended defining the date of their first coming into force. The Clerk of the Council shall affix his mark to all laws now established within thirty days; and hereafter whosoever is acting as clerk shall forthwith make a note that the law is in force as from the date of enactment.

The existing laws are excellent, gentlemen of the jury; but the law just read has defined them, if I may so put it, and given them new authority. It ordains that every statute shall be operative as from the date of enactment, unless any date is appended, and, in that case, that the specified date shall mark the beginning of its operation. The reason is that a clause had been appended to many statutes, to the effect that this law shall be in force from the time of the next ensuing archon. But the man who, to confirm such statutes, proposed the statute that has just been read, did not, in drafting his law at a later date, think it right to carry back to their dates of enactment those laws whose operation had been deferred to a date later than their enactment, and so make them operative earlier than their several authors intended.

You must therefore observe how contrary to that statute is the law that Timocrates has proposed. The statute ordains that either the date specified or the date of enactment shall hold good; Timocrates writes, if the penalty has been inflicted, referring to past transactions. He did not even define the initial date by naming an archonship; nay, he has made his law operative not merely before the date of enactment, but before any of us were born, for he has included all past time without any limitation.—Your duty, Timocrates, was either not to compose your law, or to repeal the other one; you had no right to throw the whole business into confusion for the furtherance of your own purposes. Read another law.

The Law

---nor in respect of disfranchised citizens, for restoration of their franchise, nor in respect of persons indebted to the Gods or to the treasury of the Athenians, for remission or composition of their debt, unless permission be granted by not less than six thousand citizens giving an affirmative vote by ballot. In that event it shall be lawful to put the question in such manner as the Council and the Assembly approve.

Here is another law which forbids any proposal in respect of disfranchised or indebted persons, for remission or composition, to be made or put to the vote, except after permission granted, and that only if at least six thousand citizens have voted aye. But Timocrates expressly proposed that, if the additional penalty of imprisonment has been inflicted on any debtor, he shall have remission on production of sureties, without any preliminary resolution having been carried, or any permission granted for such a resolution.

Even when a man has got his permission, the law does not allow him to do the business as he chooses, but as the Council and the Assembly approve. Timocrates was not satisfied with the simple transgression of making his proposal and introducing his law on the matters in question without permission granted; he went further and, without laying any proposition before the Council or before the Assembly, on the sly, when the Council stood adjourned, and everybody was holiday-making in honor of the festival, he brought in his bill surreptitiously.—

Yet, if your intentions had been honest, Timocrates, knowing as you did the statute which I have read, it was your duty, first to make written request for audience before the Council, then to confer with the Assembly, and after that, if the whole body of citizens had approved, to compose and bring in your bill on the matters in question, and even then to wait for the dates prescribed by law, in order that, doing business in that fashion, even though anyone tried to show that your law was disadvantageous to the State, you might not have been suspected of malicious intention, but only of the misfortune of erroneous judgement.

As it is, by thrusting your law into the statute-book clandestinely, hastily, and illegally, you have stripped yourself of all claim to indulgence; for indulgence belongs to those who offend unwittingly, not to those who have concerted a plot, as you are convicted of doing. However, I shall have a word to say on that point presently. Meantime,—read the next law.

The Law

If any person make petition to the Council or to the Assembly in respect of any sentence of a Court of Justice or of the Council or of the Assembly, if the person who has been fined himself make petition before he has paid the fine, an information shall lie against him in the same manner as when a person sits on a jury being indebted to the treasury; and if another person make petition on behalf of the person fined, his whole property shall be confiscated; and if any Commissioner shall allow the question to be put for anyone, whether for the person fined or for another on his behalf, he shall be disfranchised.

It is a long task, gentlemen of the jury, if we are to speak of all the laws to which the proposals introduced by the defendant are repugnant; but if any law deserves discussion it is surely that which the clerk has just read. The author of that law knew how kind-hearted and indulgent you Athenians are; he could see that in many instances you had already suffered serious detriment by your own act because of that easy disposition;

and therefore, wishing to leave no excuse for public losses, he declared it wrongful that men who had been convicted of misconduct by process and judgement with the sanction of law should enjoy the benefit of your good-nature, falling back upon prayers and solicitation in their distress. Accordingly he strictly forbade either the culprit himself or anyone else to supplicate you or make speeches upon such complaints; they must do what justice demands in silence.

Now if you were asked for whom you would more naturally do a service, for those who beg you or for those who bid you, I am sure you would reply, for those who beg; for the former service is the outcome of kindliness, the latter of cowardice. Well, the laws, all of them, command you to do your duty; suppliants beg you to do a favour. Then where supplication is forbidden, can it be permissible to introduce a law that contains a command? I think not. In cases in which you conceived it to be your duty even to refuse favours, it is shameful that you should allow the desires of certain people to be fulfilled against your will.—Read the statute that comes next in order.

The Law

When there has been a prior judgement audit or adjudication about any matter in a court of law, whether in a public or a private suit, or where the State has been vendor, none of the magistrates may bring the matter into court or put any question to the vote, nor shall they permit any accusation forbidden by law.

Why, it looks as though Timocrates were compiling evidence of his own transgressions; for at the very outset of his law he makes a proposal exactly contrary to these provisions. The legislator does not permit any question once decided by judgement of the court to be put a second time; the law of Timocrates reads that, if any penalty has been inflicted on a man in pursuance of a law or a decree, the Assembly must reconsider the matter for him, in order that the decision of the court may be overruled, and sureties put in by the person amerced. The statute forbids any magistrate even to put the question contrary to these provisions; Timocrates proposes that, if sureties are nominated, the Commissioners shall be obliged to submit their names, and adds the phrase, whenever any debtor wishes.—

Read another statute.

The Law

Judgements and awards given under the law while the government was democratic shall be valid.

No, says Timocrates; they shall not be valid, at least when the penalty of imprisonment has been imposed.—Proceed.

Law

But acts done and judgements delivered during the time of the Thirty Tyrants, whether in private or public suits, shall be invalid.