Greek Texts & Translations

24.66That the law he has proposed is contrary to the statutes just read, to those which I cited before, and, I may almost say, to every law in Athens, is now, I suppose, manifest to every one of you. I really wonder what he will have the face to say about those statutes. He cannot show that his law does not contradict the others; and he will not be able to convince you that he is a simple layman who did not know what he was doing through lack of experience, because for a long time past he has been celebrated for composing and introducing laws at so much apiece. Moreover, there is another course that is not open to him: 24.67he cannot admit that he has done wrong and then plead that he deserves forgiveness; for it is quite clear that he did not propose his law unwillingly, or to help the distressed, or his own family, or people who have a claim upon him. He did it by intention, on behalf of men who have done you a grave injury, and who are in no way related to him,—unless he pretends that payment of wages is a bond of kinship.

24.68I will now do my best to prove that the law he introduced is unacceptable and disadvantageous to the citizens. I presume that you will all agree with me that a really wholesome law, such as is calculated to benefit the people, ought, in the first place, to be drawn simply and intelligibly, not in such terms that one man thinks it means this and another that; and, secondly, that the proceedings prescribed by the law ought to be practicable, for if a law, though well-meant, were to enjoin what is impossible, it would be attempting the work not of a law, but of a prayer. 24.69Furthermore, it should plainly appear that it does not offer an easy time to any wrongdoer. For if anyone supposes that indulgent laws are the mark of popular government, let him ask this further question: to whom are they to be indulgent? If he will look at the matter rightly, he will find that the answer is, to persons who are going to be tried, not to persons already convicted. For of the former we may say that it is still uncertain whether they have been unjustly calumniated; but the latter can no longer plead that they are not evil-doers. 24.70Now it shall be made clear that the law before us exhibits none of the traits I have enumerated, but the very opposite, taking them one by one. There are many ways in which I might make good that statement; the best will be to go through the law itself, phrase by phrase. It is not a law well-conceived in parts, and defective in parts; from beginning to end, from the first syllable to the last, it is enacted to your detriment.— 24.71The clerk shall take the actual manuscript, and read the law to the jury as far as the end of the first section.—That is the easiest way for me to explain, and for you to apprehend, what I mean.Law of Timocrates

During the first presidency, namely, that of the Pandionid Tribe, on the twelfth day of that presidency, the question was put by Aristocles of Myrrhinus, one of the Commissioners: moved by Timocrates, that if the additional penalty of imprisonment has been or shall hereafter be inflicted in pursuance of any law or decree upon any person in debt to the treasury, it shall be competent for him or for any person on his behalf to nominate as sureties for the debt—

24.72Stop; you shall read it clause by clause presently. This, gentlemen of the jury, is very nearly the most scandalous provision of the whole statute. I do not think that any other man, when introducing a law for the use of his fellow-citizens, ever ventured upon an attempt to rescind judgements passed under earlier statutes. Yet that is what the defendant Timocrates has done without shame and even without concealment, inserting these plain words: “if the additional penalty of imprisonment has been or shall hereafter be inflicted in pursuance of any law or decree upon any person in debt to the treasury.” 24.73If he had merely advised us of the right course for the future, there would have been no harm in it but, when a court of justice has given its verdict and determined the issue, is it not outrageous to introduce a law by which that verdict is to be rescinded? It is as though, after allowing the law of Timocrates to become operative, someone should draft a second law to this effect: “if any persons being indebted, and having had the further penalty of imprisonment passed upon them, shall have put in sureties as the law directs, they shall not be entitled to such bail, and it shall not be lawful hereafter to release anyone on bail.” 24.74I suppose that no man in his senses would do such a thing; and you, sir, were guilty when you tried to annul those other provisions. For if he thought it a fair thing to do, his proper course was to introduce a law governing future transactions; not to lump together all offences, past and future, proven and unproven, and then register an indiscriminate judgement upon all together. Surely it is outrageous that men who have already been convicted of offences against the common weal should be deemed worthy of the same judicial treatment as men of whom it is not yet known whether they will ever do anything that deserves prosecution?