Greek Texts & Translations

22.69Yes, it may be said, this is the sort of man he was in his public conduct, but there are other things which he has managed with credit. On the contrary, in every respect his behavior towards his fellow-citizens has been such that the story you have heard is the least of the reasons you have for hating him. What do you wish me to mention? How he “repaired” the processional ornaments? How he broke up the crowns? His success as a manufacturer of saucers? Why, for those performances alone, though he had committed no other fraud on the city, it seems to me he deserves not one but three sentences of death; for he is guilty of sacrilege, of impiety, of embezzlement, of every monstrous crime. 22.70The greater part of the speech by which he threw dust in your eyes I will leave unnoticed; but, by alleging that the leaves of the crowns were rotten with age and falling off,—as though they were violet-leaves or rose-leaves, not leaves made of gold—he persuaded you to melt them down. And then, in providing for the collection of taxes, he had put in a clause that the public accountant should attend. That was very honest of him; only every taxpayer was certain to check the accounts. But in dealing with the crowns that he was to break up, he left out that very proper regulation; one and the same man was orator, goldsmith, business manager, and auditor of accounts. 22.71Now if you, sir, had claimed our entire confidence in all your public business, your dishonesty would not have been equally manifest; but, seeing that in the matter of the taxes you laid down the just principle that the city must trust, not you, but her own servants, and then, when you took up another job and were tampering with the consecrated plate, some of it dedicated before we were born, you forgot to provide the precaution that was taken at your own instance in respect of the tax collection, is it not perfectly clear what you were aiming at? Of course it is. 22.72Again, men of Athens, consider those glorious and enviable inscriptions that he has obliterated for all time, and the strange and blasphemous inscriptions that he has written in their stead. You all, I suppose, used to see the words written under the circlets of the crowns: “The Allies to the Athenian People for valor and righteousness,” or “The Allies to the Goddess of Athens, a prize of victory”; or, from the several states of the alliance, “Such-and-such a City to the People by whom they were delivered,” or, “The liberated Euboeans,” for example, “crown the People”; or again, “Conon from the sea-fight with the Lacedaemonians.” Such, I say, were the inscriptions of the crowns. 22.73They were tokens of emulation and honorable ambition; but now they have vanished with the destruction of the crowns, and the saucers which that lewd fellow has had made in their place bear the inscription, “Made by direction of Androtion.” And so the name of a man whom the laws forbid to enter our temples in person because of his prostitution, has been inscribed on the cups in those temples. Just like the old inscriptions, is it not? and an equal incentive to ambition? 22.74[You may, then, mark three scandalous crimes committed by these persons. They have robbed the Goddess of her crowns. They have extinguished in the city that spirit of emulation that sprang from the achievements which the crowns, while in being, commemorated. They have deprived the donors of a great honor,—the credit of gratitude for benefits received. After this long series of evil deeds they have grown so callous and so audacious that they recall those crimes as admirable examples of their administration, so that one of them expects you to acquit him for the sake of the other, and the other sits by his side and does not sink into the ground for shame at his conduct.] 22.75Not only is he lost to shame when money is in question, but he is so dull-witted that he cannot see that crowns are a symbol of merit, but saucers and the like only of wealth; that every crown, how ever small, implies the same regard for honor as if it were large. that drinking-cups and censers, if very numerous, attach to their owners a sort of reputation for wealth, but that, if a man takes pride in trifles, instead of winning some honor by them, he is disdained as a man of vulgar tastes. This man, then, has destroyed the possessions of honor, and made the possessions of wealth mean and unworthy of your dignity.