Tyrannicida

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.