Against Agoratus: In Pursuance of a Writ

Lysias

Lysias. Lamb, W.R.M., translator. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1930.

It is the duty of you all, gentlemen, as it is of each one of us, to avenge those men. For it was their dying injunction both to us and to all their friends, that we should avenge them on this man Agoratus as their murderer, and do him, in a word, all the injury of which each of us is capable. Now, if they have manifestly done some good service to the city or your democracy, as you yourselves acknowledge, it must follow that you all are friends and intimates of theirs, so that they enjoined this on each of you no less than on us. Hence it would be impious as well as illegal for you to absolve this man Agoratus.