Against Nicomachus

so that he cannot expect to get any credit on that account. For while this man did contribute his share to your exile, he owed his return to you, the people. And besides, it would be monstrous if you should feel grateful to him for what he underwent against his will, but should exact no requital for his voluntary offences.

I am informed that he alleges that I am guilty of impiety in seeking to abolish the sacrifices. But if it were I who were law-making over this transcription of our code, I should take it to be open to Nicomachus to make such a statement about me. But in fact I am merely claiming that he should obey the code established and patent to all[*](The speaker seems to mean: If I, like Nicomachus, were using the opportunities of a transcriber for the purpose of unauthorized law-making, he might reasonably accuse me of some such innovation as abolishing sacrifices; whereas I merely demand that he should adhere to the established code, about which there is no doubt or secrecy.); and I am surprised at his not observing that, when he taxes me with impiety for saying that we ought to perform the sacrifices named in the tablets and pillars as directed in the regulations, he is accusing the city as well: for they are what you have decreed. And then, sir, if you feel these to be hard words, surely you must attribute grievous guilt to those citizens who used to sacrifice solely in accordance with the tablets.

But of course, gentlemen of the jury, we are not to be instructed in piety by Nicomachus, but are rather to be guided by the ways of the past. Now our ancestors, by sacrificing in accordance with the tablets, have handed down to us a city superior in greatness and prosperity to any other in Greece; so that it behoves us to perform the same sacrifices as they did, if for no other reason than that of the success which has resulted from those rites.

And how could a man show greater piety than mine, when I demand, first that our sacrifices be performed according to our ancestral rules, and second that they be those which tend to promote the interests of the city, and finally those which the people have decreed and which we shall be able to afford out of the public revenue? But you, Nicomachus, have done the opposite of this: by entering in your copy a greater number than had been ordained you have caused the public revenue to be expended on these, and hence to be deficient for our ancestral offerings.

For example, last year some sacrifices, costing three talents, were in abeyance, though they were among those inscribed on the tablets. And it cannot be said that the revenues of the State were insufficient; for if this man had not entered sacrifices to an excess amounting to six talents, there would have been enough for our ancestral offerings, and moreover the State would have had a surplus of three talents. In support of these statements I will add the evidence of witnesses.