Demosthenes, Speeches (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose; rhetoric] [word count] [lemma count] [Dem.]. | ||
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But first the clerk shall read you the law which provides for the lodging of plaints in the Assembly; after that I will try to enlighten you on other points. Recite the law. [The Prytanes shall call a meeting of the Assembly in the temple of Dionysus on the day next after the Pandia. At this meeting they shall first deal with religious matters; next they shall lay before it the plaints lodged concerning the procession or the contests at the Dionysia, namely such as have not been satisfied.]Law
21.9This is the law, Athenians, which provides for the lodging of a plaint. It directs, as you have heard, that a meeting of the Assembly shall be held in the temple of Dionysus after the Pandia, and that at this meeting, when the chairmen for the day have dealt with the official acts of the chief Archon, they shall also deal with any offences or illegal acts in connection with the festival—a sound and expedient law, Athenians, as the facts of the present case attest. For when it appears that certain persons, with this threat overhanging them, can be as insolent as ever, how should we expect that such men would behave, if there were no risk and no trial to be faced?
21.10Now I want to read to you the next law as well, because it will illustrate to all of you the self-restraint of the citizens in general and the hardihood of the defendant. Read the law.
Law
[Evegorus proposed that, on the occasion of the procession in honor of Dionysus in Peiraeus with the comedies and tragedies, the procession at the Lenaeum with the comedies and tragedies, the procession at the City Dionysia with the boys' contests and the revel and the comedies and tragedies. and also at the procession and contest of the Thargelia, it shall not be lawful on those days to distrain or to seize any debtors' property, even if they are defaulters. If anyone transgresses any of these regulations, he shall be liable to prosecution by the aggrieved party, and public plaints against him as an offender may be lodged at the meeting of the Assembly in the temple of Dionysus, as is provided by statute in the case of other offenders.]
21.11You will observe, gentlemen of the jury, that whereas in the first law the public plaint may be lodged against those who violate the laws of the festival, in the latter law you have sanctioned plaints against those who exact money from defaulting debtors or seize any property or use violence to that end. So far from thinking it right that any man's person should be outraged on those days, or that any equipment should be damaged which a citizen provides out of his private means for a public service, you have even conceded that what by law and by verdict belongs to the winner of a suit should remain the property of the loser and original owner, at any rate during the festival.
Demosthenes, Speeches (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose; rhetoric] [word count] [lemma count] [Dem.]. | ||
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