Against Aristogeiton II

It would be a most scandalous state of things if, while these men, to whom you were indebted for so many services, were not allowed to do anything contrary to your established laws, this man, who has never done you a single good service, but has committed a prodigious number of offences, should be found to have received at your hands, so readily and so contrary to justice and expediency, the right to transgress the laws. And why appeal to ancient history? Count up the men of your own days and see if anyone has ever been found so shameless. A careful scrutiny will not reveal a single instance.

Now apart from all this, whenever a man lodges with the judicial Archons an objection against a decree or law, that law or decree is invalid and the mover or proposer has not the impudence to employ violence, but loyally accepts your decision, even if he is the foremost orator or administrator in your city. Yet is it not absurd that, while decrees passed by you in full assembly as in accordance with the laws should be invalid, you should imagine that you ought to make the whim of Aristogeiton to flout the laws more authoritative than the laws themselves?

Again, when a plaintiff fails to obtain a fifth part of the votes, in cases where the laws forbid him henceforward to indict anyone or arrest him or give him into custody, in the same way none of those liable to these disqualifications ever dreams of defying them. But for Aristogeiton, it seems, and for Aristogeiton alone, no court, no law has authority higher than his own caprice.

Neither you nor your ancestors ever repented of observing these rules, for it is the salvation of democracy that it overcomes its enemies either by good counsel or by arms, but submits to its laws either by free choice or under constraint; and that this principle is sound, is allowed even by the defendant himself.

For after the disasters to the Greek forces at Chaeroneia, when the very foundations of our State were threatened with the utmost danger, when Hypereides proposed that the disfranchised citizens should be reinstated in order that, if any such danger should menace our State, all classes might unite wholeheartedly in the struggle for liberty, the defendant indicted this decree as unconstitutional and conducted his case in court.

But is it not monstrous that, where the safety of the State is involved, the defendant should allow none of his fellow-citizens to obtain enfranchisement, but should claim that same favour from you all, in order to cover his own lawlessness? Yet the former vote, Aristogeiton, was far more lawful and equitable than the vote which you now require the jurors to cast in your favour.

For the one was fair and equal for all citizens alike, but this is unfair and brings profit to you alone of all the people of Athens. The first was intended to prevent a peace by which one man would have been put in control of the whole government; the effect of this vote will be that you have received authority to transgress with impunity the decisions of the jury and the laws handed down by our ancestors—to do, in fact, whatever you please.