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.

It was I, then, who put an end to the tyranny, and the sword that accomplished everything was mine. But I inverted the order of executions, and made an innovation in the method of putting criminals to death, for I myself destroyed the stronger, the one capable of self-defence, and resigned the old man to my unaided sword.

It was my thought, therefore, that I should get for this a still more generous gift from you, and should receive rewards to match the number of the slain, because I had freed you not only from your present ills, but from your expectation of those that were to come, and had accorded you established liberty, since no successor in wrongdoing had been left alive. But now there is danger that after all these achievements I may come away from you unrewarded and may be the only one to be excluded from the recompense afforded by those laws which I maintained.

My adversary here seems to me to be taking this course, not, as he says, because of his concern for the interests of the state, but because of his grief over the dead men, and in the endeavour to avenge them upon the man who caused their death.

On your part, however, gentlemen of the jury, bear with me for a moment while I recount the history of their tyranny, although you know it well; for then you can appreciate the greatness of my benefaction and you yourselves will be more exultant, thinking of all that you have escaped.

It is not as it has often before been with others ; it is not a simple tyranny and a single slavery that we have endured, nor a single master’s caprice that we have borne. Nay, of all those who have ever experienced such adversity we alone had two masters

The young man conceded the honour to him by right of age and abstained from the name of sovereignty, but only from that; he was the substance and the mainspring of the tyranny. He gave the government its assurance and security, and he alone reaped the profit of its crimes. It was he who kept their guardsmen together, who maintained their defences in strength, who terrorised their subjects and extirpated conspirators; it was he who plucked lads from their homes, who made a mockery of marriages; it was for him that maids were carried off; and whatever deeds of blood there were, whatever banishments, confiscations of property, applications of torture, and outrages—all these were a young man’s emprises. The old man followed him and shared his

What hurt us most was to know that our slavery would be long, nay unending, that our city would be handed down by succession from despot to despot, and that our folk would be the heritage of villains. To other peoples it is no slight comfort to think, and to tell one another, “But it will stop soon,” “But he will die soon, and in a little while we shall be free.’ In their case, however, there was no such comfort; we saw the successor to the sovereignty already at hand. Therefore not one of the brave men who entertained the same purpose as myself even ventured to make an attempt. Liberty was wholly despaired of, and the tyranny was thought invincible, because any attempt would be directed against so many.

This, however, did not frighten me; I did not draw back when I estimated the difficulty of the achievement, nor play the coward in the face of danger. Alone, alone, I climbed the hill to front the tyranny that was so strong and many-headed—yet, not alone but with my sword that shared the fray with me and in its turn was tyrant-slayer too. I had my death in prospect, but sought to purchase our common liberty with the shedding of my own blood. I met the first guard-post, routed the guardsmen with no little difficulty, slew whomsoever I encountered, destroyed whatsoever blocked my path. Then I assailed the very forefront of my tasks, the sole

The tyranny, therefore, had at last been overthrown, my undertaking had attained fulfilment, and from that moment we all were free. Only an old man still remained, unarmed, his guards lost, that mighty henchman of his gone, deserted, no longer even worthy of a valiant arm.

Thereupon, gentlemen of the jury, I thus reasoned with myself; “All has gone well for me, everything is accomplished, my success is complete. How shall the survivor be punished? Of me and my right hand he is unworthy, particularly if his slaying were to follow a glorious, daring, valiant deed, dishonouring that other mortal thrust. He must seek a fitting executioner, a change of fate, and not profit by having the same one. Let him behold, suffer his punishment, have the sword lying at hand; I commit the rest to him.” This plan formed, I myself withdrew, and he, as I had presaged, carried through with it, slew the tyrant, supplied the ending to my lay.

I am here, then, to bring you democracy, to notify all that they may now take heart, and to herald the glad tidings of liberty. Even now you are enjoying the results of my achievements. The acropolis, as you see, is empty of malefactors, and nobody issues

This man, however, opposes my plea, and says that I am acting unreasonably in desiring to be honoured and to receive the gift, since I am not a tyrant-slayer, and have not accomplished anything in the eyes of the law; that my achievement is in some respect insufficient for claiming the reward. I ask him, therefore: “What more do you demand of me? Did I not form the purpose? Did I not climb the hill? DidI not slay? Did I not bring liberty? Does anyone issue orders? Does anyone give commands? Does any lord and master utter threats? Did any of the malefactors escape me? Youcannot say so. No, everything is full of peace, we have all our laws, liberty is manifest, democracy is made safe, marriages are free from outrage, boys are free from fear, maidens are secure, and the city is celebrating its common good fortune. Who, then, is responsible for it all? Who stopped all that and caused all this? If there is anyone who deserves to be honoured in preference to me, I yield the guerdon, I resign the

“Because you did not slay the tyrant himself; and the law bestows the reward upon the slayer of a tyrant!” Is there any difference, tell me, between slaying him and causing his death? For my part I think there is none. All that the lawgiver had in view was simply liberty, democracy, freedom from dire ills. He bestowed honour upon this, he considered this worthy of compensation; and you cannot say that it has come about otherwise than through me. For if I caused a death which made it impossible for that man to live, I myself accomplished his slaying. The deed was mine, the hand was his. Then quibble no longer about the manner of his end; do not enquire how he died, but whether he no longer lives, whether his no longer living is due to me. Otherwise, it seems to me that you will be likely to carry your enquiry still further, to the point of carping at your benefactors if one of them should do the killing with a stone or a staff or in some other way, and not with a sword.

What if I had starved the tyrant out of his hold and thus occasioned the necessity of his death? Would you in that case require me to have killed him with my own hand, or say that I failed in any respect of satisfying the law, even though the malefactor had been done to death more cruelly? Enquire into one thing only, demand this alone, disturb yourself about this alone, whether any one of the villains is left, any

I remember, moreover, this statement in the laws (unless, by reason of our protracted slavery, I have forgotten what is said in them), that there are two sorts of responsibility for manslaughter, and if, without taking life himself or doing the deed with his own hand, a man has necessitated and given rise to the killing, the law requires that in this case too he himself receive the same punishment—quite justly, for it was unwilling to be worsted by his deed through his immunity. It would be irrelevant, therefore, to enquire into the manner of the killing.

Can it, then, be that you think fit to punish as a murderer one who has taken life in this manner, and are not willing under any circumstances to acquit him, yet when a man has conferred a boon upon the city in the same way, you do not propose to hold him worthy of the same treatment as your benefactors?

For you cannot even say that I did it at haphazard, and that a result followed which chanced to be beneficial, without my having intended it. What else did I fear after the stronger was slain, and why did I leave the sword in my victim if I did not absolutely prefigure exactly what would come to pass! You have no answer, unless you maintain that the dead man was not a tyrant and did not have that

Can it be that, now the tyrant has been slain, you are going to refuse the reward to the man who caused his death? What pettiness! Does it concern you how he died, as long as you enjoy your liberty? Do you demand any greater boon of the man who gave back your democracy? “But the law,” you say, “‘scrutinises only the main point in the facts of the case, ignoring all the incidentals and raising no further question!” What! was there not once a man who obtained the guerdon of a tyrannicide by just driving a tyrant into exile?[*](The allusion is to Harmodius, who slew Hipparchus, the brother of the tyrant Hippias. ) Quite rightly, too; for he bestowed liberty in exchange for slavery. But what I have wrought is not exile, or expectation of a second uprising, but complete abolition, extinction of the entire line, extirpation, root and branch, of the whole menace.

Do, in the name of the gods, make a full enquiry, if you like, from beginning to end, and see whether anything that affects the law has been left undone, and whether any qualification is wanting that a tyrant-slayer ought to have. In the first place, one must have at the outset a will that is valiant, patriotic, disposed to run risks for the common weal, and ready to purchase by its own extinction the deliverance of the people. Then did I fall short of that, play the weakling, or, my purpose formed, shrink from any of the risks that lay ahead? You cannot say so. Then confine your attention for a moment to this

But as things are, that is not what I say; no, I climbed the acropolis, I put myself in peril, I accomplished untold labours before I slew the young man. For you must not suppose that the affair was so easy and simple—to pass a guard, to overpower men-at-arms, to rout so many by myself; no, this is quite the mightiest obstacle in the slaying of a tyrant, and the principal of its achievements. For of course it is not the tyrant himself that is mighty and impregnable and indomitable, but what guards and maintains his tyranny; if anyone conquers all this, he has attained complete success, and what remains is trivial. Of course the approach to the tyrants would not have been open to me if I had not overpowered all the guards and henchmen about them, conquering all these to begin with. I add nothing further, but once more confine myself to this point: I overpowered the outposts, conquered the bodyguards, rendered the tyrant unprotected, unarmed, defenceless. Does it seem to you that I deserve honour for that, or do you further demand of me the shedding of his blood?

But even if you require bloodshed, that is not wanting either, and I am not unstained with blood; on the contrary, I have done a great and valiant deed in that I slew a young man in the fullness of his strength, terrible to all, through whom that other was unassailed by plots, on whom alone he relied, who sufficed him instead of many guardsmen. Then am I not deserving of a reward, man? Am I to be devoid of honours for such deeds? What if I had killed a bodyguard, or some henchman of the tyrant, or a valued slave? Would not even this have seemed a great thing, to go up and slay one of the tyrant’s friends in the midst of the citadel, in the midst of arms? But as it is, look at the slain man himself! He was a tyrant’s son, nay more, a harsher tyrant, an inexorable despot, a more cruel chastiser, a more violent oppressor; what is most important, he was heir and successor to everything, and capable of prolonging vastly the duration of our misery.

Suppose, if you will, that this was my sole achievement—that the tyrant has made his escape and is still alive. Well and good, I demand a guerdon for this. What do you all say? Will you not vouchsafe it? Did you not view the son, too, with concern? Was he notadespot? Was he not cruel, unendurable?

As it is, however, think of the crowning feat itself. What this man requires of me I accomplished in the best possible way. I killed the tyrant by killing someone else, not directly nor at a single blow, which would have been his fondest prayer after misdeeds so monstrous. No, first I tortured him with profound grief, displayed full in his view. all that was dearest

For I was not unaware, man—I was not unaware, nor was anyone else, how much love he had for his son, and that he would not have wanted to outlive him even a little while. To be sure, all fathers no doubt have such feelings toward their children; ‘but in his case there was something more than in the case of others; naturally, for he discerned that it was his son who alone cherished and guarded the tyranny, who alone faced danger in his father’s stead, and gave security to his rule. Consequently I knew that he would lay down his life at once, if not through his love, then at all events through his despair, considering that there was no profit in life now that the security derived from his son had been abolished. I encompassed him, therefore, with all manner of toils at once—his nature, his grief, his despair, his misgivings about the future; I used these allies against him, and forced him to that final decision. He has gone to his death childless, griefstricken, in sorrow and in tears, after mourning but a little while, it is true, yet long enough for a father; gone (and that is most horrible) by his own

Where is my sword? Does anyone else recognise this? Was this any other man’s weapon? Who carried it up to the citadel? Who preceded the tyrant in its use? Who commissioned it against him? Good sword, partner and promoter of my successes, after so many perils, after so many slayings, we are disregarded and thought unworthy of a reward! If it were for the sword alone that I sought the meed of honour trom you—if I were pleading: “Gentlemen, when the tyrant wished to die and at the moment found himself unarmed, this sword of mine served him and did its part in every way towards the attainment of liberty—account it worthy of honour and reward,” would you not have requited the owner of a possession so valuable to the state? Would you not have recorded him among your benefactors? Would you not have enshrined the sword among your hallowed treasures? Would you not have worshipped it along with the gods?