Against Theomnestus 2

That he asserted that I had killed my father is in the knowledge of many of you, and they are my witnesses. But that I have not done it is evident; for I am thirty-two years old, and this is the twentieth year since your return to the city.

You see, then, that I was twelve years old when my father was put to death by the Thirty, so that I did not even know what an oligarchy was, nor was I capable of defending my father. Nor, again, was his property a motive for my having designs upon him; for my elder brother got everything, and left us destitute.

Perhaps he will say that it is not among the forbidden things to say a man has killed his father, since the law does not prohibit this, but disallows the word murderer. But I think our dispute ought not to be over mere terms, but over the intention shown in acts, and that everyone knows that all who have killed others are murderers of those same persons, and those who are murderers of another have killed that man.

For it would be too great a task for the lawgiver to write all the terms that have the same meaning: he preferred to mention one which should indicate all. I presume it cannot be that, if anyone who calls you a father-beater or a mother-beater is liable to a penalty, at the same time a person who says that you strike your male or female parent is to escape punishment.

So, if someone calls a man a shield-caster, he is to be immune, since the law imposes a penalty for saying that a man has thrown away his shield, but not for saying he has cast it. Similarly, if you were one of the Eleven, you would not accept a prisoner arrested for stripping a man of his cloak or his shirt, unless he were given the name of clothes-stealer.

Nor, if someone abducted a child, would you accept him as a kidnapper. Now you have yourself taken proceedings for slander against the person who said you had cast your shield: yet it is not so written in the law, but the phrase is saying a man has thrown it away. How monstrous, then, that if such a thing is said about you, you should make play with the laws in the way I am doing now, and should be avenged on your enemies; but if you say such a thing yourself, you should claim to escape punishment!

I ask you, therefore, gentlemen, to protect me, reflecting that it is a greater injury to be accused of killing one’s father than of having cast one’s shield. I, for one, would rather admit to having thrown away any number than to entertaining such thoughts regarding my father. Yet I have seen this man acting in the way that you know, while I myself saved my shield. So on what ground should I fail to get redress from him?

What imputation stands against me? That I have been justly accused? No, not even yourselves can say so. That the defendant is a better man? No, not even himself can claim this. That having thrown away my arms I am suing a man who saved his? This is not the story that has been dispersed over the city.

Do not, then, pity him for obloquy that he deserves, nor forgive him for outrages and expressions whereby he has broken the laws, especially in regard to a man[*](The speaker’s father.) who has held many generalships and shared many of your perils; who has neither fallen into the hands of the enemy nor been convicted by you at the audit of his service, and who at the age of seventy lost his life under the oligarchy for loyalty to you. There is good cause to feel anger on his account:

for what more distressing repute could he have than this,—after being slain by his enemies to bear the reproach of having been destroyed by his children? The memorials of his valor are hanging in your temples, while those of these people’s baseness are seen in the temples of the enemy.

He will say that he has made the statement in a fit of anger. But your reflection on this must be that the lawgiver grants no indulgence to anger; he punishes the speaker, unless he proves the truth of his words. I have borne witness twice in regard to this man: for I was not aware that you punished the persons who had seen the deed, but pardoned those who had done the throwing away. I therefore request you to condemn him.

For although at this moment I am prosecuting for slander, yet at the same casting of your vote I am prosecuted for murdering my father: no trial could be more serious for me than this; and I alone, when certified of age, indicted the Thirty before the Areopagus. Vindicate, therefore, both my father and me.