On the Scrutiny of Evandros

As to his love of quiet, I say that we ought not to investigate his sobriety today, when there is no chance for him to be licentious: we should rather examine that period in which, being free to choose either way of life, he preferred to mark his citizenship by illegal acts. For the fact of his committing no offences now is due to those who have prevented him; but what he did then was owing to the man’s character and to those who vouchsafed him a free hand. So that if he claims to pass the scrutiny on this score, you should form this conception of the case, if you would not seem fatuous in his sight.

And if they have recourse to the further argument that time does not allow of your electing another man, and that his failure to pass your scrutiny must inevitably leave the ancestral sacrifices unperformed, you should reflect that the time has already long gone by. For tomorrow is the last remaining day of the year, and on that day a sacrifice is offered to Zeus the Saviour, when it is impossible to complete a panel of jurymen in defiance of the laws.[*](Apparently the law forbade any court to sit on that day.)

If all these difficulties are the contrivance of this man, what are we to expect, when once he has passed the scrutiny, of the man who will have persuaded the outgoing magistrates to commit an illegality in his interest? Will he contrive just a few things of this sort in the course of a year? For my part, I think not.

But you have to consider, not this question alone, but whether piety is better served by the sacrifices on behalf of the future magistrate being offered by the king-archon and his fellow-magistrates,—as has in fact been done in the past,—or by this man, whom those who know about him have testified to be not even without stained hands[*](Probably referring to murders committed in compliance with the violent measures of the Thirty.); and whether you have sworn to install a magistrate who has not passed the scrutiny or, after holding the scrutiny, to crown the man who is worthy of the office?