Greek Texts & Translations

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 Athens, in the drafting of this decree, but none more gravely than that which has just been read. Though the law so clearly gives permission to slay, and states under what conditions, the defendant ignores all those conditions, and has drawn his penal clause without any suggestion as to the manner of the slaying. 23.54Yet mark how righteously and admirably these distinctions are severally defined by the lawgiver who defined them originally. “If a man kill another in an athletic contest,” he declared him to be not guilty, for this reason, that he had regard not to the event but to the intention of the agent. That intention is, not to kill his man, but to vanquish him unslain. If the other combatant was too weak to support the struggle for victory, he considered him responsible for his own fate, and therefore provided no retribution on his account. 23.55Again, “if in battle unwittingly”—the man who so slays is free of bloodguiltiness. Good: If I have destroyed a man supposing him to be one of the enemy, I deserve, not to stand trial, but to be forgiven. “Or in intercourse with his wife, or mother, or sister, or daughter, or concubine kept for the procreation of legitimate children.” He lets the man who slays one so treating any of these women go scot-free; and that acquittal, men of Athens, is the most righteous of all. 23.56Why? Because in the defence of those for whose sake we fight our enemies, to save them from indignity and licentiousness, he permitted us to slay even our friends, if they insult them and defile them in defiance of law. Men are not our friends and our foes by natural generation: they are made such by their own actions; and the law gives us freedom to chastise as enemies those whose acts are hostile. When there are so many conditions that justify the slaying of anyone else, it is monstrous that that man should be the only man in the world whom, even under those conditions, it is to be unlawful to slay. 23.57Let us suppose that a fate that has doubtless befallen others before now should befall him—that he should withdraw from Thrace and come and live somewhere in a civilized community; and that, though no longer enjoying the licence under which he now commits many illegalities, he should be driven by his habits and his lusts to attempt the sort of behavior I have mentioned, will not a man be obliged to allow himself to be insulted by Charidemus in silence? It will not be safe to put him to death, nor, by reason of this decree, to obtain the satisfaction provided by law. 23.58If anyone interrupts me with a question, “And where, pray, are such things likely to happen?” there is nothing to prevent me from asking, “And who is likely to kill Charidemus?” Well, we need not go into those questions; only, inasmuch as the decree now on trial refers, not to any past transaction, but to something of which nobody knows whether it will happen or not, let the uncertainty of the future be common ground to both sides; let us, as mankind are wont, adjust our expectations thereto, and consider the matter on the presumption that both the one contingency and the other may possibly happen. 23.59Moreover, if you annul the decree, should anything happen to Charidemus, the legitimate means of avenging him are still there. On the other hand, if you let it stand, and if before he dies he maltreats any man, the man whom he insults has been defrauded of his legal remedy. Therefore on every ground the decree is contrary to law, and ought to be annulled.

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. 23.61I shall be told that this is a quibble of ours; who will ever be “violently and illegally seized” by Charidemus? Everybody. Surely you are aware that any man who has troops at command lays hands on whomsoever he thinks he can overpower, demanding ransom. Heaven and Earth! Is it not monstrous, is it not manifestly contrary to law,—I do not mean merely to the statute law but to the unwritten law of our common humanity,—that I should not be permitted to defend myself against one who violently seizes my goods as though I were an enemy? And that will be so, if the slaying of Charidemus is forbidden even on those terms,—if even though he be iniquitously plundering another man's property, his slayer is to be liable to seizure, though the statute ordains that he who takes life under such conditions shall have impunity.