| Antiphon, Speeches (English) (XML Header) [word count] [lemma count] [Antiph.]. | ||
| <<Antiph. 5.1 | Antiph. 5.15 (Greek) | >>Antiph. 5.26 |
5.12This requirement you have evaded. You have invented laws to suit yourself. You, the prosecutor, are not on oath; nor are the witnesses, who are giving evidence against me which they should have given only after taking the same preliminary oath as yourself, their hands on the sacrifice as they did so. You bid the court, moreover, believe your witnesses, in spite of their not being on oath, and pass sentence for murder—when your own evasion of the laws of the land has destroyed the trustworthiness of those witnesses. Yes, you imagine that, in the eyes of the court, the laws themselves should have less authority than your own actions in defiance of them.
5.13You reply that if I had been allowed my freedom, I should have made off without awaiting my trial—as though you had forced me to enter this country against my will. Yet if I attached no importance to being debarred from Athens for the future, it was equally open to me either to disregard the summons to appear in court and so lose the case by default, or to avail myself of the right given to every one of leaving the country after making the first speech for the defense. note You, however, for purely personal reasons, are trying to rob me, and me alone, of a privilege accorded to every Greek, by framing a law to suit yourself.
5.14Yet it would be unanimously agreed, I think, that the laws which deal with cases such as the present are the most admirable and righteous of all laws. Not only have they the distinction of being the oldest in this country, but they have changed no more than the crime with which they are concerned; and that is the surest token of good laws, as time and experience show mankind what is imperfect. Hence you must not use the speech for the prosecution to discover whether your laws are good or bad: you must use the laws to discover whether or not the speech for the prosecution is giving you a correct and lawful interpretation of the case. note
5.15The laws concerned with the taking of life are thus excellent, and no one has ever before ventured to interfere with them. You alone have had the audacity to turn legislator and substitute worse for better; and the object of this arbitrary behavior of yours is to have me put to death without just cause. In fact, your infringement of the law is itself decisive evidence in my favor, because you well knew that you would find no one to testify to my guilt once he had taken that preliminary oath.
5.16Furthermore, instead of acting like a man confident of his case and arranging that it should be tried once and indisputably, you have left yourself grounds for dispute and argument, as though you proposed to show your distrust of even the present court. The result is that even if I am acquitted today, I am no better off; you can say that it was as a malefactor that I was acquitted, not on a charge of murder. On the other hand, if you win your case, you will claim my life, on the ground that it is on a charge of murder that I have been tried and found guilty. Could any thing more unfair be devised? You and your associates have only to convince this court once, and your object is gained; whereas I, if I am acquitted once, am left in the same peril as before.
5.17Then again, gentlemen, my imprisonment was an act of illegality quite without parallel. I was ready to furnish the three sureties required by law; yet the prosecution took steps to ensure that I should be prevented from doing so. Hitherto no alien willing to furnish sureties has ever been imprisoned; and, moreover, the law concerned applies to the custodians of malefactors note as it does to others. Here again, then, we have a law by which every one benefits: and it has failed to release me, and me alone, from confinement.
5.18The reason was that it was to the prosecution's advantage, first, that I should be prevented from looking after my interests in person, and so be quite unable to prepare for my trial: and secondly, that I should undergo bodily suffering, and by reason of that bodily suffering find my friends readier to tell lies as witnesses for the prosecution than the truth as witnesses for the defence. note In addition to which, lifelong disgrace has been brought upon me and mine.
5.19Such are the manifold respects in which I have had to submit to a loss note of the rights accorded me by your laws and by justice before appearing in court. However, in spite of that disadvantage, I will try to prove my innocence: although it is hard to refute at a moment's notice false charges so carefully framed, as one cannot prepare oneself against the unexpected.
5.20I sailed from Mytilene , gentlemen, as a passenger on the same boat as this Herodes whom, we are told, I murdered. We were bound for Aenus , I to visit my father, who happened to be there just then, and Herodes to release some slaves note to certain Thracians. The slaves whom he was to release were also passengers, as were the Thracians who were to purchase their freedom. I will produce witnesses to satisfy you of this. Methymna , where the boat on to which Herodes transhipped, and on which the prosecution maintain that he met his end, lay at anchor. Now consider these circumstances in themselves to begin with; they were due to chance, not to any design on my part. It has nowhere been shown that I persuaded Herodes to accompany me; on the contrary, it has been shown that I made the voyage independently on business of my own.
Witnesses5.21Such were our respective reasons for making the voyage. In the course of it, we happened to meet with a storm which forced us to put in at a place within the territory of
| Antiphon, Speeches (English) (XML Header) [word count] [lemma count] [Antiph.]. | ||
| <<Antiph. 5.1 | Antiph. 5.15 (Greek) | >>Antiph. 5.26 |
