Greek Texts & Translations

21.213An imposing muster of wealthy men, whose prosperity has raised them to apparent importance, will come into court to plead with you. Men of Athens, do not sacrifice me to any one of them; but just as each of them will be zealous for his private interests and for the defendant, so be zealous for your own selves and for the laws, as well as for me who have fled to you for refuge, and cleave to the opinion that you already hold. 21.214If, men of Athens, at the time of the plaint the people, after hearing the facts, had acquitted Meidias, it would not be so hard to bear: one might console oneself with the fancy that the assault had never been made, or that it was not a profanation of the festival, and so on. 21.215But now this would be the hardest blow for me to bear, if, when the offences were fresh in your memory, you displayed such anger and indignation and bitterness that, when Neoptolemus and Mnesarchides and Philippides and another of these very wealthy men were interceding with you and me, you shouted to me not to let him off, and when Blepaeus the banker came up to me, you raised such an uproar, as if I was going to take a bribe—the old, old story!— 21.216that I was startled by your clamor, Athenians, and let my cloak drop so that I was half-naked in my tunic, trying to get away from his grasp, and when you met me afterwards, “Mind you prosecute the blackguard,” you cried; “don't let him go; the Athenians will watch to see what you are going to do”; and yet when the act has been condemned by vote as an outrage, and those who gave that verdict were sitting in a sacred building, and when I have stuck to my task and not betrayed either you or myself, if after all this you are going to acquit him. ^note 21.217Never! [Such a result entails all that is most disgraceful. I do not deserve this at your hands, Athenians. How should I, when I am bringing to justice a fellow who is as violent a bully as he is reputed to be, who has offended against decency at a public festival, and who has made not only you, but all the Greeks who were visiting the city, witnesses of his brutality? The people heard what he had done. What was the result? They voted him guilty and passed him on to your court. 21.218So it is impossible that your decision should be concealed or hushed up, or that the question should not be asked, How did you judge the case when it was brought before you? No; if you punish him, you will be thought men of discretion and honor and haters of iniquity; but if you acquit him, you will seem to have capitulated to some other motive.] For this is not a political issue, nor does it resemble the case of Aristophon, who stopped the plaint against him by restoring the crowns. This case arises from the insolence of Meidias and from the impossibility of his undoing any of his acts. [Is it then better, in view of the past, to punish him now or the next time he offends? Now is the time, I think, because the trial is a public one, even as the offences for which he is being tried were public.]

21.219Furthermore, it was not I alone, men of Athens, that he then, in his intention, struck and insulted, when he acted as he did, but all who may be supposed less able than I am to obtain satisfaction for themselves. If you were not all beaten, if you were not all insulted while acting as choir-masters, you realize of course that you cannot all be choir-masters at the same time, and that no one could possibly assault all of you at once with a single fist.