Hellenica

Now you all know, men of Athens, that the decree of Cannonus is exceedingly severe: it provides that if anyone shall wrong the people of Athens, he shall plead his case in fetters before the people, and if he be adjudged guilty, he shall be put to death by being cast into[*](406 B.C.) the pit, and his property shall be confiscated and the tenth part thereof shall belong to the goddess.

Under this decree I urge you to try the generals, and, by Zeus, if it so please you, Pericles, my kinsman, first of them all; for it would be base for me to think more of him than of the general interests of the state.

Or if you do not wish to do this, try them under the following law, which applies to temple-robbers and traitors: namely, if anyone shall be a traitor to the state or shall steal sacred property, he shall be tried before a court, and if he be convicted, he shall not be buried in Attica, and his property shall be confiscated.

By whichever of these laws you choose, men of Athens, let the men be tried, each one separately,[*](It was a general principle of Athenian law—perhaps specifically stated in the decree of Cannonus (see above)—that each accused person had the right to a separate trial.) and let the day be divided into three parts, one wherein you shall gather and vote as to whether you judge them guilty or not, another wherein the accusers shall present their case, and another wherein the accused shall make their defence.

If this is done, the guilty will incur the severest punishment, and the guiltless will be set free by you, men of Athens, and will not be put to death unjustly.

As for yourselves, you will be granting a trial in accordance with the law and standing true to religion and your oaths, and you will not be fighting on the side of the Lacedaemonians by putting to death the men who captured seventy ships from them and defeated them,—by putting to death these men, I say, without a trial, in violation of the law.

What is it, pray, that you fear, that you are in such[*](406 B.C.) excessive haste? Do you fear lest you will lose the right to put to death and set free anyone you please if you proceed in accordance with the law, but think that you will retain this right if you proceed in violation of the law, by the method which Callixeinus persuaded the Senate to report to the people, that is, by a single vote?

Yes, but you might possibly be putting to death some one who is really innocent; and repentance afterwards—ah, remember how painful and unavailing it always is, and especially when one’s error has brought about a man’s death.

You would do a monstrous thing if, after granting in the past to Aristarchus,[*](In 411 B.C. Aristarchus helped to establish the short-lived oligarchical government of the Four Hundred.) the destroyer of the democracy and afterwards the betrayer of Oenoe to your enemies the Thebans, a day in which to defend himself as he pleased, and allowing him all his other rights under the law,—if, I say, you shall now deprive the generals, who have done everything to your satisfaction, and have defeated the enemy, of these same rights.

Let no such act be yours, men of Athens, but guard the laws, which are your own and above all else have made you supremely great, and do not try to do anything without their sanction.And now come back to the actual circumstances under which the mistakes are thought to have been committed by the generals. When, after winning the battle, they sailed in to the shore, Diomedon urged that they should one and all put out to sea in line and pick up the wreckage and the shipwrecked men, while Erasinides proposed that all should sail with the utmost speed against the enemy at Mytilene. But Thrasyllus said that both things[*](406 B.C.) would be accomplished if they should leave some of the ships there and should sail with the rest against the enemy;

and if this plan were decided upon, he advised that each of the generals, who were eight in number, should leave behind three ships from his own division, and that they should also leave the ten ships of the taxiarchs, the ten of the Samians, and the three of the nauarchs. These amount all told to forty-seven ships, four for each one of the lost vessels, which were twelve in number.

Among the captains who were left behind were both Thrasybulus and Theramenes, the man who accused the generals at the former meeting of the Assembly. And with the rest of the ships they planned to sail against the enemy’s fleet. Now what one of these acts did they not do adequately and well? It is but just, therefore, that those, on the one hand, who were detailed to go against the enemy should be held to account for their lack of success in dealing with the enemy, and that those, on the other hand, who were detailed to recover the shipwrecked, in case they did not do what the generals ordered, should be tried for not recovering them.