Against Nicomachus

WitnessesReflect, therefore, gentlemen of the jury, that when we proceed in accordance with the regulations, all the ancestral offerings are made; but when we are guided by the pillars as copied by this man, numerous rites are abolished.[*](i.e., some of the ancestral rites are dropped because the necessary funds have to be spent on the rites that he has foisted into the code.) Whereupon the sacrilegious wretch runs about saying that his transcription was piety and not parsimony, and that if you do not approve of his work you had better erase it: by this means he thinks to persuade you of his innocence. Yet in two years he has managed to spend twelve talents more than was necessary,

and has endeavored to mulct the State in a sum of six talents each year,—and that too when he saw her in difficulties for money, the Lacedaemonians threatening us if we failed to remit them their payments, the Boeotians taking reprisals because we could not refund two talents, and the shipping sheds and the walls falling to pieces; when he knew that the Council for the time being is not led into error if it has sufficient means for the administration, but is forced in a time of difficulty to accept impeachments, to confiscate the property of our citizens, and to be swayed by the most unprincipled of its orators!

You ought therefore, gentlemen, to be incensed, not with those who happen to be on the Council, but with those who reduce the State to these awful straits. And the men who seek to rob the public purse are watching closely to see how Nicomachus will fare in these proceedings. If you do not punish him, you will grant them absolute licence; but if you condemn him and award him your heaviest sentence, by the same vote you will reform the rest, and will have done justice upon this man.

Understand, gentlemen of the jury, that it will be an example to the rest, and will deter them from committing offences against you, if instead of punishing unskillful speakers you exact requital from the skillful. And from whom amongst our citizens could it be more suitably exacted than from Nicomachus? Who has rendered less service or done more wrong to the city?

Appointed to transcribe our code of duties, secular and sacred, he has offended against both. Remember that ere now you have put many of the citizens to death for peculation: yet the injury that they had done you was only for the passing moment, whereas these men,[*](The speaker enlarges the crime of the accused by suggesting that there are others practicing or attempting the same thing.) by taking bribes for the version that they made of our laws, damage the city for all time.