On the Confiscation of the Property Of The Brother Of Nicias: Peroration

And yet it would have been more pardonable to show resentment shortly after you had returned, while your anger was freshly kindled, than to pursue so belated a vengeance for what is overpast at the bidding of men who, after remaining in the city, conceive that they give you a pledge of their own loyalty when they make bad subjects of their fellows instead of showing themselves good ones, and who today reap the fruits of the city’s successes without having previously shared your perils.

And if you saw, gentlemen, that the property confiscated by these men was being secured for the State, we should forgive them; but the fact is, as you well know, that some of it is melting away in their hands, while the rest, though of great value, is being sold off cheap. Yet, if you will take my advice, you will receive no less profit from it than we, the owners.

For at this moment Diomnestus, my brother and I, three of one household, are equipping warships, and when the State requires money we raise a special contribution on these properties. Since, then, we are of this way of thinking, and our ancestors have evinced the same character, spare us.

Else we should have no escape, gentlemen, from the most miserable plight: after being left orphans in the time of the Thirty we should be stripped of our property under the democracy,—we, to whom fortune vouchsafed that, as mere children, we should succor the people by going to the tent of Pausanias! Having such a record behind us, with what judges would we have chosen to take refuge?

Surely with those who support a constitution for which both our father and our kinsmen gave their lives. And so today this is the sole return that we ask of you for all that we have done,—that you do not suffer us to be reduced to destitution or left in want of bare necessaries, and that you do not ruin the prosperity that was our ancestors’, but much rather give an example to those who desire to do the State good service of the treatment that they will receive from you in times of danger.

I have nobody, gentlemen, whom I can put up here to plead on our behalf: for some of my kinsmen, after giving proof of their valor in promoting the greatness of the city, have perished in the war; others, in the defence of the democracy and of your freedom, have drunk hemlock under the Thirty.