| Demosthenes, Speeches (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose; rhetoric] [word count] [lemma count] [Dem.]. | ||
| <<Dem. 23.69 | Dem. 23.78 (Greek) | >>Dem. 23.86 |
23.75The defendant, however, admitted no exception; he simply makes an outcast of any man who kills Charidemus, even though he kill him justly or as the laws permit. And yet to every act and to every word one of two epithets is applicable: it is either just or unjust. To no act and to no word can both these epithets be applied at the same time, for how can the same act at the same time be both just and not just? Every act is brought to the test as having the one or the other of these qualities; if it be found to have the quality of injustice, it is adjudged to be wicked, if of justice, to be good and honest.—But you, sir, used neither qualification when you wrote the words, “if any man kill.” You named the mere accusation, without any definition, and then immediately added, “let him be liable to seizure.” Thereby you have evidently ignored this tribunal and its usages as well as the other two.
Athens , the law orders every man stand his trial who, having gone into exile on a charge of unintentional homicide, and being still unreconciled to the persons who procured his banishment, incurs a further charge of willful murder. The author of the several rules of court did not let such a man alone, on the ground that he was unable to return to Athens , nor did he, because the man had already committed a like offence, treat the similarity of the accusation as proof positive against him;
23.78he found a way of satisfying the requirements of religion without depriving the culprit of a fair hearing and a trial. How did he manage it? He conveyed the judges who were to sit to a place to which the accused was able to repair, appointing a place within the country but on the sea-coast, known as the precinct of Phreatto. The culprit approaches the shore in a vessel, and makes his speech without landing, while the judges listen to him and give judgement on shore. If found guilty, the man suffers the penalty of willful murder as he deserves; if acquitted, he goes his way scot-free in respect of that charge, but still subject to punishment for the earlier homicide.
23.79Now with what object have these regulations been made so carefully? The man who drew them up accounted it equally irreligious to let slip the guilty, and to cast out the innocent before trial. But if such great pains are taken in the case of persons already adjudged to be homicides, to ensure for them a hearing, a trial, and fair treatment in every respect upon any subsequent accusation, surely it is most outrageous to provide that a man who has not yet been found guilty, and of whom it is still undecided whether he committed the act or not, and whether the act was involuntary or willful, should be handed over to the mercy of his accusers.
23.76There is also a fourth tribunal, that at the Prytaneum. Its function is that, if a man is struck by a stone, or a piece of wood or iron, or anything of that sort, falling upon him, and if someone, without knowing who threw it, knows and possesses the implement of homicide, he takes proceedings against these implements in that court. Well, if it is not righteous to deny a trial even to a lifeless and senseless thing, the object of so grave an accusation, assuredly it is impious and outrageous that a man who may possibly be not guilty, and who in any case,—and I will assume him to be guilty,—is a human being endowed by fortune with the same nature as ourselves, should be made an outcast on such a charge without a hearing and without a verdict.
23.77Then there is a fifth tribunal which he has overruled,—and I beg you to take note of its character; I mean the court held in the precinct of Phreatto. In that court, men of
23.80In addition to all these provisions for legal redress there is a sixth, which the defendant has equally defied in his decree. Suppose that a man is ignorant of all the processes I have mentioned, or that the proper time for taking such proceedings has elapsed, that for any other reasons he does not choose to prosecute by those methods; if he sees the homicide frequenting places of worship or the market, he may arrest him and take him to jail; but not, as you have permitted, to his own house or wherever he chooses. When under arrest he will suffer no injury in jail until after his trial; but, if he is found guilty, he will be punished with death. On the other hand, if the person who arrested him does not get a fifth part of the votes, he will be fined a thousand drachmas. 23.81The proposals of the defendant are quite different: the accuser is to prosecute without risk, the culprit to be given up incontinently and without trial; and if any person, or indeed any entire city, shall intervene to prevent the destruction of all those usages which I have described and the overthrow of all the tribunals I have mentioned; tribunals introduced by the gods and frequented by mankind from that day to this,—and to rescue the victims of outrage and lawless violence, he proposes that any such person shall be banned; for him also he allows no hearing and no trial, but punishes him instantly and without trial. Could any decree be more monstrous and more unconstitutional?
23.82Have we any statute left? . . . Let me see it. . . . . Yes, that is the one; read it.
Law
If any man die a violent death, his kinsmen may take and hold hostages in respect of such death, until they either submit to trial for bloodguiltiness, or surrender the actual manslayers. This right is limited to three hostages and no more.
We have many well-conceived laws, men of
| Demosthenes, Speeches (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose; rhetoric] [word count] [lemma count] [Dem.]. | ||
| <<Dem. 23.69 | Dem. 23.78 (Greek) | >>Dem. 23.86 |
