Greek Texts & Translations

1.7All public trials should therefore rank as important, but particularly this present one, in which you are about to cast your vote. For when you give a verdict on a charge of illegal proposals you merely rectify one single error, and in preventing the intended measure your scope depends upon the extent to which the decree in question will harm the city. But the present case is not concerned with some trifling constitutional issue, nor yet with a moment of time; our city's whole life is at stake, and this trial will leave a verdict to posterity to be remembered for all time. 1.8So dangerous is the wrong which has been done and so far-reaching that no indictment adequate could be devised, nor have the laws defined a punishment for the crimes. What punishment would suit a man who left his country and refused to guard the temples of his fathers, who abandoned the graves of his ancestors and surrendered the whole country into the hands of the enemy? The greatest and final penalty, death, though the maximum punishment allowed by law, is too small for the crimes of Leocrates. 1.9The reason why the penalty for such offences, gentlemen, has never been recorded is not that the legislators of the past were neglectful; it is that such things had not happened hitherto and were not expected to happen in the future. It is therefore most essential that you should be not merely judges of this present case but lawmakers besides. For where a crime has been defined by some law, it is easy, with that as a standard, to punish the offender. But where different offences are not specifically included in the law, being covered by a single designation, and where a man has committed crimes worse than these and is equally chargeable with them all, your verdict must be left as a precedent for your successors. 1.10I assure you, gentlemen, that if you condemn this man you will do more than merely punish him; you will be giving all younger men an incentive to right conduct. For there are two influences at work in the education of the young: the punishments suffered by wrongdoers and the reward available to the virtuous. With these alternatives before their eyes they are deterred by fear from the one and attracted by desire for honor to the other. You must therefore give your minds to the trial on hand and let your first consideration be justice.

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.