| Demosthenes, Speeches (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose; rhetoric] [word count] [lemma count] [Dem.]. | ||
| <<Dem. 21.79 | Dem. 21.88 (Greek) | >>Dem. 21.98 |
21.85It was now evening and growing dark. Up comes this fellow Meidias to the office of the Archons, and finds them just leaving and Strato already making his way home after having handed to them his judgement of guilty by default. This I learned from one of the bystanders. Well, at first he had the impudence to try and persuade Strato to report a judgement for the defendant instead of one for the plaintiff, and he wanted the Archons to alter the record and offered them fifty drachmas.
21.86But finding that they resented the offer and that he could persuade neither Archons nor arbitrator, he threatened them and blackguarded them and went off and—what do you think he did? Just observe his malignity. [He appealed against the arbitration but omitted the oath, thus allowing the verdict against him to be made absolute, and he was recorded as unsworn. Then, wishing to conceal his real object,] he waited for the last day note for appeal against the arbitrators, which falls in Thargelion or Scirophorion, a day on which some of the arbitrators turned up but others did not;
21.87he induced the presiding arbitrator to put it to the vote contrary to all the laws, because Meidias had not appended the name of a single witness to the summons; he denounces Strato in his absence and in the absence of witnesses, and gets him struck off the roll of arbitrators and disfranchised. And so a citizen of Athens , because Meidias lost his suit by default, has been deprived of all his civic rights, and has been irrevocably disfranchised; and it is unsafe for him to bring an action against Meidias when wronged, or to act as arbitrator for him, or even, it seems, to walk the same street with him.
21.88[Now you must consider the transaction from this point of view. Estimate what loss Meidias must have suffered before he could plan such a dire revenge against a fellow-citizen; and if it was something really terrible and overwhelming, he may be forgiven, but if it was nothing of the sort, mark the insolent brutality with which he treats all whom he comes across. Well, what loss has he suffered? He was cast, you reply, in a big lawsuit, so big that he has lost all his property.
21.89But the lawsuit only involved a thousand drachmas. True, you will say; but the galling thing is to be made to pay unfairly, and it was the unfairness of it that caused him to let the day of payment pass unnoticed. note But he noticed his mistake the same day, which is the strongest possible proof that Strato had done him no wrong; and he has not yet paid a single drachma. But of that later.
21.90But of course he could have moved for a fresh trial on the ground of nullity, and so made me the object of his litigation as at the first. But no; that was not his game. To save him from defending a suit in which the penalty was fixed by law at ten minas—the suit in which he neglected to apppear—to save him from paying the penalty if guilty or if innocent, a citizen of Athens must needs be disfranchised, and must obtain neither pardon nor right of defence nor any sort of equitable treatment, privileges extended even to those whose guilt is established.
21.91But now that he has disfranchised the man he wanted to, and you have indulged him in this; now that he has sated that shameless temper that prompted him to this course, has he finished the business? Has he paid the fine, to escape which he ruined the poor fellow? Not a brass farthing of it to this day! He submits rather to be the defendant in an action for ejectment. So the one man is disfranchised and ruined on a side issue; the other is unscathed and is playing havoc with the laws, the arbitrators, and everything else that he pleases.
21.92Moreover, he has secured the validity of the award against the arbitrator, which he maneuvered to get without serving a summons, while the suit which he lost to me, wittingly and after due summons, this he renders invalid.] Yet if such is the vengeance that he claims from arbitrators who have given judgement against him by default, what vengeance ought you to wreak on a man who openly and wantonly transgresses your laws? [For if disfranchisement and loss of all legal and civil rights is a fitting punishment for that other offence, death seems an inadequate one for this reckless outrage.]
21.93However, to prove the truth of my statements, please call the witnesses, and also read the law concerning arbitrators.
Witnesses
[We, Nicostratus of Myrrhinus and Phanias of Aphidna, know that Demosthenes, for whom we appear, and Meidias, who is being prosecuted by Demosthenes, when Demosthenes brought his action against him for slander, chose
Strato as arbitrator; and when the statutory day arrived, Meidias did not appear in court but abandoned the case. Judgement having gone by default against Meidias, we know that Meidias tried to induceStrato , the arbitrator, and us, who were at that time Archons, to reverse the judgement against him, and he offered us fifty drachmas, and, when we resented his offer, he threatened us and so departed. Also we know that on this accountStrato was victimized by Meidias and was disfranchised contrary to all justice.]
| Demosthenes, Speeches (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose; rhetoric] [word count] [lemma count] [Dem.]. | ||
| <<Dem. 21.79 | Dem. 21.88 (Greek) | >>Dem. 21.98 |
