Tyrannicida

A man went to the Acropolis to slay the tyrant. He did not find him, but slew his son and left his sword in the body. When the tyrant came and saw his son already dead, he slew himself with the same sword. The man who went up and slew the tyrant’s son claims the reward for slaying the tyrant.

Two tyrants, gentlemen of the jury,[*](The form of procedure posited is analogous to dokimasia at Athens. The claimant’s right to the reward offered by the state has been challenged by one of his fellow-citizens, and the authorities have referred the question to a jury. The adversary, as plaintiff, has already spoken. ) have been done to death by me in a single day, one already past his prime, the other in the ripeness of his years and in better case to take up wrongdoing in his turn. Yet I have come to claim but one reward for both, as the only tyrant-slayer of all time who has done away with two malefactors at a single blow, killing the son with the sword and the father by means of his affection for his son. The tyrant has paid us a sufficient penalty for what he did, for while he still lived he saw his son, prematurely slain, in the toils of death, and at last (a thing incomparably strange) he himself was constrained to become his own executioner. And his son not only met death at my hands, but even after death assisted me to slay another ; for though while he still lived he shared his father’s crimes, after his death he slew his father as best he might.