Greek Texts & Translations

24.102Not only, then, does he deprive the court of authority in respect of supplementary payments, offer immunity to defrauders of the State, cripple our national service, and undermine our financial system, but also, by abrogating the penalties imposed by the existing statutes, he has enacted his law for the benefit of swindlers, parricides, and shirkers. 24.103The statutes enacted by Solon, a very different legislator from the defendant, provided that if a man is convicted of theft, and not punished with death, he shall suffer imprisonment; that if a man found guilty of ill-treating his parents intrudes upon the market-place, he shall go to jail; and that if a man, having been convicted of shirking military service, behaves as though he were not disfranchised, he also shall be imprisoned. Timocrates gives impunity to all these offenders, for he abolishes imprisonment if they put in bail. 24.104Therefore, in my judgement )and though you may think what I am going to say rather coarse, I will say it without hesitation(, he deserves, on that very account, to be punished with death, so that he may pass this law in Hell for the benefit of the wicked, and leave us who are still alive in the continued enjoyment of our holy and righteous laws.—Read also the laws I have mentioned. 24.105Laws Concerning Theft, Maltreatment of Parents, and Desertion

If a man has recovered the property lost, the penalty shall be twice the value of such property; if he has not recovered it, ten times the value in addition to the lawful amercement. The thief shall be kept in the stocks for five days and five nights, if an additional penalty is awarded by the court; and such additional penalty may be proposed by anyone, when the question of sentence is raised.—If any man be put under arrest after being found guilty of ill-treating his parents or of shirking service, or for entering any forbidden place after notice of outlawry, the Eleven shall put him into prison and bring him before the Court of Heliaea, and any person being a lawful prosecutor may prosecute him. If he be found guilty, the Court shall determine what penalty, corporal or pecuniary, he shall suffer; and if the penalty be pecuniary, he shall be kept in prison until he has paid the fine.

24.106Much alike these two legislators, Solon and Timocrates,—are they not, men of Athens? Solon aims at the reformation of the living and of the unborn; Timocrates points the scoundrels of the past to a road by which they may escape justice, and invents a scheme of impunity for malefactors present and malefactors to come, providing deliverance and reprieve for past, present, and future sinners alike. 24.107—What adequate satisfaction can you render, or by what punishment can you be punished as you deserve, you who, to say nothing of the rest, subvert the laws that protect old age, that compel the maintenance of parents in their lifetime, and ensure that they shall be honored with due observance when they die? How can you escape being adjudged the basest of mankind, you reprobate, who openly account thieves and scoundrels and shirkers of more value than your fatherland, and for their sake bring in a law to our detriment?

24.108Now I propose to reckon up how I have fulfilled the promises I made at the outset of my address. I undertook to prove that he is amenable to the indictment in every respect, first, because he legislated illegally; secondly, because his proposals were contrary to existing statutes; and thirdly, because they were injurious to the commonwealth. Well, you have now heard the statutes, and what they enjoin upon the author of a new law; and again I have satisfied you that the defendant has not observed any one of those injunctions. 24.109Further, you have also heard the statutes with which the defendant's law is manifestly at variance; and you are aware that he has introduced it without repeal of those statutes. And you have certainly heard that the law is detrimental, for I have only just left off telling you so. Therefore he is unquestionably guilty on every count, and in nothing has he shown consideration or scruple; but, as it seems to me, if anything else had been forbidden by the existing statutes, he would have done that as well.

24.110From every point of view it is clear that he framed his proposals with a sinister purpose, and that he offends of malice prepense and not by error of judgement, especially as the character of his law is preserved down to the very last syllable. He proposed nothing that was right, nothing likely to be serviceable to you, even unintentionally. Surely you are bound to abhor and to punish a man who had no thought for wrongs done to the people, but enacted laws for the benefit of those who have injured you before and will injure you again.