Greek Texts & Translations

24.41You have heard the law, and I beg you to bear in mind this phrase, “if the additional penalty of imprisonment has been or shall hereafter be inflicted,” and also that he excepts from the operation of his law tax-farmers and lessees and their sureties. The law as a whole, but those provisions more especially, is contrary to all existing statutes. That you will recognize when you have listened to the actual laws.—Read. 24.42Law

Moved by Diocles: that laws enacted under democratic government before the archonship of Eucleides and all laws that were enacted during the archonship of Eucleides and are on record shall be in force. Laws enacted after the archonship of Eucleides or laws that shall hereafter be enacted shall be in force as from the day of their several enactment, unless a clause be appended defining the date of their first coming into force. The Clerk of the Council shall affix his mark to all laws now established within thirty days; and hereafter whosoever is acting as clerk shall forthwith make a note that the law is in force as from the date of enactment.

24.43The existing laws are excellent, gentlemen of the jury; but the law just read has defined them, if I may so put it, and given them new authority. It ordains that every statute shall be operative as from the date of enactment, unless any date is appended, and, in that case, that the specified date shall mark the beginning of its operation. The reason is that a clause had been appended to many statutes, to the effect that “this law shall be in force from the time of the next ensuing archon.” But the man who, to confirm such statutes, proposed the statute that has just been read, did not, in drafting his law at a later date, think it right to carry back to their dates of enactment those laws whose operation had been deferred to a date later than their enactment, and so make them operative earlier than their several authors intended. 24.44You must therefore observe how contrary to that statute is the law that Timocrates has proposed. The statute ordains that either the date specified or the date of enactment shall hold good; Timocrates writes, “if the penalty has been inflicted,” referring to past transactions. He did not even define the initial date by naming an archonship; nay, he has made his law operative not merely before the date of enactment, but before any of us were born, for he has included all past time without any limitation.—Your duty, Timocrates, was either not to compose your law, or to repeal the other one; you had no right to throw the whole business into confusion for the furtherance of your own purposes. Read another law. 24.45Law

. . . . nor in respect of disfranchised citizens, for restoration of their franchise, nor in respect of persons indebted to the Gods or to the treasury of the Athenians, for remission or composition of their debt, unless permission be granted by not less than six thousand citizens giving an affirmative vote by ballot. In that event it shall be lawful to put the question in such manner as the Council and the Assembly approve.

24.46Here is another law which forbids any proposal in respect of disfranchised or indebted persons, for remission or composition, to be made or put to the vote, except after permission granted, and that only if at least six thousand citizens have voted aye. But Timocrates expressly proposed that, if the additional penalty of imprisonment has been inflicted on any debtor, he shall have remission on production of sureties, without any preliminary resolution having been carried, or any permission granted for such a resolution. 24.47Even when a man has got his permission, the law does not allow him to do the business as he chooses, but as the Council and the Assembly approve. Timocrates was not satisfied with the simple transgression of making his proposal and introducing his law on the matters in question without permission granted; he went further and, without laying any proposition before the Council or before the Assembly, on the sly, when the Council stood adjourned, and everybody was holiday-making in honor of the festival, he brought in his bill surreptitiously.— 24.48Yet, if your intentions had been honest, Timocrates, knowing as you did the statute which I have read, it was your duty, first to make written request for audience before the Council, then to confer with the Assembly, and after that, if the whole body of citizens had approved, to compose and bring in your bill on the matters in question, and even then to wait for the dates prescribed by law, in order that, doing business in that fashion, even though anyone tried to show that your law was disadvantageous to the State, you might not have been suspected of malicious intention, but only of the misfortune of erroneous judgement.