Greek Texts & Translations

1.11In my speech also justice shall come first; on no occasion will I have recourse to falsehoods or irrelevance. Most of the speakers who come before you behave in the strangest possible manner, either giving you advice from the platform on public affairs or wasting their charges and calumnies on any subject except the one on which you are going to vote. Either course is easy, whether they choose to express an opinion on questions about which you are not deliberating or else to invent a charge to which no one is going to reply. 1.12But it is wrong that they should ask for justice from you when you give your vote and yet be unjust themselves in handling the prosecution. And yet the blame for this is yours, gentlemen; for you have granted this freedom to speakers appearing before you, although you have, in the council of the Areopagus, the finest model in Greece: a court so superior to others that even the men convicted in it admit that its judgements are just. 1.13Let it be your pattern, and, like it, do not give way to speakers who digress from the point. If you take this advice, defendants will receive an unbiased hearing, accusers will be least able to give false information, and you will best be able to make the verdict in keeping with your oath. For those who have not been rightly informed cannot give their verdict rightly.

1.14A further point for you to notice, gentlemen, is this: the trial of Leocrates is not comparable with that of other ordinary men. For if the defendant were unknown in Greece, your verdict, whether good or bad, would be a matter solely for yourselves to contemplate. But where this man is concerned, whatever judgement you may give will be discussed by every Greek, since it is common knowledge that the conduct of your ancestors was just the opposite of his. He won notoriety by his voyage to Rhodes and the discreditable report of you which he made officially to the Rhodians and to those merchants residing there; 1.15merchants who sailed round the whole Greek world on their business and passed on the news of Athens which they had heard from Leocrates. It is important therefore to reach a correct verdict upon him. For you must realize, Athenians, that you would be held to have neglected the virtues which chiefly distinguish you from the rest of mankind, piety towards the gods, reverence for your ancestors and ambition for your country, if this man were to escape punishment at your hands.

1.16I am asking you, Athenians, to listen to my accusation to the end and not to be impatient if I begin with the history of Athens at the time under discussion; you may reserve your anger for the men whose fault it is that I am now compelled to recall those happenings. After the battle of Chaeronea you all gathered hastily to the Assembly, and the people decreed that the women and children should be brought from the countryside inside the walls and that the generals should appoint any Athenians or other residents at Athens to defence duties as they thought fit. ^note 1.17Leocrates ignored all these provisions. He collected what belongings he had and with his slaves' assistance placed them in the ship's boat, the ship itself being already anchored off the shore. Late in the evening he went out himself with his mistress Irenis through the postern gate on to the open beach and sailed out to the ship. And so he disappeared, a deserter, untouched by pity for the city's harbors from which he was putting out to sea, and unashamed in face of the walls which, for his own part, he left undefended. Looking back at the Acropolis and the temple of Zeus the Savior and Athena the Protectress, which he had betrayed, he had no fear, though he will presently call upon these gods to save him from danger. 1.18He landed and entered Rhodes, where, as if he were bringing good news of great successes for his country, he announced that the main city had been captured when he left it, that the Piraeus was blockaded and that he was the only one who had escaped, feeling no shame at speaking of his country's ruin as the occasion of his own safety. The Rhodians took his news so seriously that they manned triremes and brought in their merchantmen; and the traders and shipowners who had intended to sail to Athens unloaded their corn and other cargoes there, because of Leocrates.