Greek Texts & Translations

1.115You hear this decree, gentlemen. After it was passed your ancestors dug up the traitor's bones and cast them out of Attica; they killed his defenders, Aristarchus and Alexicles, and even refused them burial in the country. Will you then, who have the very person who has betrayed the city alive and at the mercy of your vote, let him go unpunished? 1.116Your ancestors inflicted the extreme penalty on men who simply lent the traitor verbal help. Will you fall so short of their example as to let go as innocent the man who abandoned the state in deed as well as word? Do not do it, gentlemen of the jury. Do not give a verdict unworthy of yourselves; for it would be both impious and contrary to your traditions. If only one such decree were recorded, we might have said that anger rather than real conviction had prompted it. But when the same punishment was meted out by them to all alike it is surely plain that our ancestors were by nature bound to make war an all such crimes. 1.117When Hipparchus, the son of Charmus, ^note did not stand his trial for treason before the people but let the case go by default, they sentenced him to death. Then, as they did not secure his person to answer for the crime, they took down his statue from the Acropolis and, melting it down, made a pillar of it, on which they decreed that the names of sinners and traitors should be inscribed. Hipparchus himself has his name recorded on this pillar and all other traitors too. 1.118Clerk, please take the decree which authorized the statue of Hipparchus to be taken down from the Acropolis and then the inscription at the base of the pillar with the names of the traitors later engraved upon it and read them out.Decree and Text of Inscription on the Pillar

1.119What is your impression of them, gentlemen? Had they the same attitude as yourselves towards wrongdoers? Or did they, by obliterating the memorial of the traitor, since they could not command his person, punish him with all the means at their disposal? The simple fact of melting down the bronze statue was not enough for them; they wished to leave to their successors a lasting memorial of their attitude to traitors.

1.120Let the jury hear the other decree, clerk, relating to the men who withdrew to Decelea ^note when the people were besieged by the Spartans, so that they will realize that the punishments inflicted by our ancestors on traitors were uniform and self-consistent. Read it.Decree

1.121You hear this decree too, gentlemen. It says that they condemned any who moved to Decelea in war-time and laid it down that those who were caught returning should be led by any Athenian who cared to do so to the Thesmothetae who should take them into custody and hand them over to the executioner. ^note If they dealt thus with men who merely changed their place in Attica, how will you treat Leocrates who in wartime fled from his city and his country to Rhodes and deserted the state? Will you not kill him? If you do not, how can you pass as the descendants of those men?

1.122You ought also to hear the decree relating to the man executed in Salamis. ^note Though he had only attempted to speak treason against the city, the Council, after removing their crowns, killed him with their own hands. It is an admirable decree, gentlemen, and well worthy of your ancestors. Their nobility, revealed in their characters, was shown too in their punishment of criminals.Decree