Demosthenes, Speeches (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose; rhetoric] [word count] [lemma count] [Dem.]. | ||
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23.53Read another statute.
Law
If a man kill another unintentionally in an athletic contest, or overcoming him in a fight on the highway, or unwittingly in battle, or in intercourse with his wife, or mother, or sister, or daughter, or concubine kept for procreation of legitimate children, he shall not go into exile as a manslayer on that account.
Many statutes have been violated, men of
23.60Read the next statute.
Law
If any man while violently and illegally seizing another shall be slain straightway in self-defence, there shall be no penalty for his death.
Here are other conditions of lawful homicide. If any man, while violently and illegally seizing another, shall be straightway slain in self-defence, the legislator ordains that there shall be no penalty for his death. I beg you to observe the wisdom of this law. By adding the word “straightway” after indicating the conditions of lawful homicide, the legislator has excluded any long premeditation of injury and by the expression, “in self-defence,” he makes it clear that he is giving indulgence to the actual sufferer, and to no other man. Thus the law permits homicide in immediate self-defence; but Aristocrates has made no such exception. He says, without qualification, “if anyone ever kills,”—that is, even if he kill righteously, or as the laws permit.
Demosthenes, Speeches (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose; rhetoric] [word count] [lemma count] [Dem.]. | ||
<<Dem. 23.46 | Dem. 23.55 (Greek) | >>Dem. 23.63 |