| Lycurgus, Speeches (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose; rhetoric] [word count] [lemma count] [Lycurg.]. | ||
| <<Lycurg. 1.20 | Lycurg. 1.28 (Greek) | >>Lycurg. 1.39 |
1.25You have heard the witnesses, gentlemen. What I am now going to say will give you good reason for indignation and hatred of this man Leocrates. For he was not content simply to remove his own person and his goods. There were the sacred images of his family which his forbears established and which, in keeping with your customs and ancestral tradition, they afterwards entrusted to him. These too he had sent to Megara . He took them out of the country without a qualm at the name “ancestral images” or at the thought that he had uprooted them from their country and expected them to share his exile, to leave the temples and the land which they had occupied and be established in a strange and uncongenial place, as aliens to the soil and to the rites traditionally observed in Megara .
1.26Your fathers, honoring note Athena as the deity to whom their land had been allotted, called their native city Athens , so that men who revered the goddess should not desert the city which bore her name. By disregarding custom, country, and sacred images Leocrates did all in his power to cause even your divine protection to be exported. Moreover, to have wronged the city on this enormous scale was not enough for him. Living at Megara and using as capital the money which he had withdrawn from Athens he shipped corn, bought from Cleopatra, note from Epirus to Leucas and from there to Corinth .
1.27And yet, gentlemen, in cases of this sort your laws lay down the most severe penalties if an Athenian transports corn to any place other than your city. When therefore a man has been a traitor in war and has broken the laws in transporting corn, when he has had no regard for sacred things and none for his country or the laws, if you have him at the mercy of your vote, will you not execute him and make an example of him to others? If you do not it will show an apathy and lack of righteous indignation completely without parallel.
1.28Consider these further proofs that my inquiry into this question has been just; for it is my opinion that in dealing with such serious crimes you must base your vote, not on conjecture, but on certainty; and that witnesses must prove their good faith before, not after, they give their evidence. I submitted to the defence a written challenge on all these points and demanded the slaves of Leocrates for torture, according to the right procedure for making challenges. Please read the challenge.
Challenge
1.29You hear the challenge, gentlemen. By the very act of refusing to accept this Leocrates condemned himself as a traitor to his country. For whoever refuses to allow the testing of those who share his secrets has confessed that the charges of the indictment are true. Every one of you knows that in matters of dispute it is considered by far the justest and most democratic course, when there are male or female slaves, who possess the necessary information, to examine these by torture and so have facts to go upon instead of hearsay, particularly when the case concerns the public and is of vital interest to the state. note 1.30Certainly I cannot be called unjust in my prosecution of Leocrates. I was even willing at my own risk to let the proof rest on the torture of his male and female slaves, but the defendant, realizing his guilt, rejected the offer instead of accepting it. Add yet, gentlemen, the male and female slaves of Leocrates would have been far readier to deny any of the real facts than to invent lies against their master. 1.31Apart from this, Leocrates will presently proclaim that he is a simple citizen and is falling a prey to the cunning of an orator and false informer. But I am sure you all know well the characteristic behavior of those unscrupulous men who try to lay false information; for when they choose their part they look for vantage-points on which to quibble against those on trial, whereas the man whose aims in going to law are honest, who brings proofs to bear against those who come under the herald's curse, note does just the opposite, as I myself am doing. 1.32Look at the present case yourselves in this way. Which people could not have been misled by cunning or a deceptive argument? The male and female slaves. Naturally, when tortured, they would have told the whole truth about all the offences. But it was just these persons whom Leocrates refused to hand over, though they were his and no one else's. 1.33On the other hand which people could he probably impose upon by arguments, appealing to their softer side by his tears and so winning their sympathy? The jury. Leocrates, the betrayer of his country, has come into court with only one fear, namely that the witnesses who by certain proofs expose the criminal will be produced from the same household as the man whom they expose. What was the use of pretexts, pleas, excuses? Justice is plain, the truth easy and the proof brief.
| Lycurgus, Speeches (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose; rhetoric] [word count] [lemma count] [Lycurg.]. | ||
| <<Lycurg. 1.20 | Lycurg. 1.28 (Greek) | >>Lycurg. 1.39 |
