Greek Texts & Translations

24.77Nor is this the only example of his arrogance. It is further enacted that “if hereafter the additional penalty of imprisonment shall have been imposed, the prisoner may be released on producing sureties for payment of his fine.” If he really thought imprisonment such a dreadful infliction, his proper course was to enact that no man who produces sureties shall be committed to prison; but not, having first found that you have passed sentence of imprisonment and so incurred the resentment of the convict, then to give him a discharge on bail. In fact, he has introduced his law in this fashion by way of advertising himself as one who will, on his own authority, release prisoners, though you may have decided to keep them in jail. 24.78Can anyone see any public advantage in a law that is to override the decisions of a court of justice, and that requires unsworn persons to cancel the judgements of sworn juries ? I hope not. It is clear that the law of Timocrates has both these faults; and if you have, each one of you, any regard for the constitution, or if you claim authority for your own decision of the questions on which you give your verdict under oath, you must abrogate a law like this, and not permit it to be made valid today.

24.79He was not satisfied with destroying the authority of this court in respect of additional penalties, but you will find that even the proceedings which he has prescribed in his law, and imposed upon culprits who have been condemned, have not been drafted with honesty and sincerity, but as though his main purpose was to mislead and overreach you. Observe the phrasing: “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 other person on his behalf to nominate as sureties for the debt such persons as shall be approved on vote by the Assembly.” 24.80See what a long stride he has taken from the court of justice and its sentences! Even to the Assembly; for he steals the person of the criminal, as well as the right to hand him over to the Eleven. What magistrate will ever hand over the delinquent? What member of the Eleven will ever accept custody? The order of Timocrates is that sureties are to be nominated in the Assembly; it is impossible for the Assembly and the Courts to be in session on the same day; and there is no injunction to keep the man in custody until he has named his sureties. 24.81Why should he have been afraid to add a distinct injunction that “the magistrate shall keep the delinquent in custody until he shall have put in his sureties”? Is not that quite fair? I am sure you will all say yes. Would it have been contrary to any statute ? No, indeed; it would have been the only clause that does conform to the statutes. Then what was his reason? There is no discoverable reason except this,—that his purpose was not to help but to obstruct the punishment of criminals condemned by you.

24.82Well, how does it go on? “To nominate sureties on an undertaking to pay in full the amount in which he was indebted.” Here again he has stolen away the right of the sacred funds to a tenfold payment, and one-half of the claim of the civil treasury, in cases where double payment is required by law. And how does he manage that? By writing “the amount” instead of “the penalty,” and “in which he was indebted” instead of “which has accrued.” 24.83The difference is this: if he had proposed that sureties should be appointed to guarantee the payment of the accruing penalty, he would have embraced in his enactment the statutes under which certain debts are doubled, and others multiplied by ten; and so the debtor would have been obliged not only to pay in full the amount of the debt as recorded, but also to liquidate the penal payments legally added thereto. As it is, by the words “nominate sureties on an undertaking to pay in full the amount in which he was indebted,” he makes the payment depend on the plaint and the documents upon which the several delinquents were brought to trial; and in those documents only the original amount of the debt is recorded.

24.84Again, after making such a big hole in the laws by juggling with words, he adds: “the Commissioners ^note are required to put the question whensoever any debtor wishes to nominate sureties,” for right through his law he thinks it his business to rescue the criminal who has been convicted in this court. By allowing the nomination of sureties to take place at the pleasure of the delinquent, he puts it into his power never to pay, and never to go to prison. 24.85Of course he will put forward men of straw, and by the time you have rejected them, he will be out of your reach. For if anyone demands his retention in jail for failing to produce sureties, he will reply that he has done so, and intends to do so; and then he will point to the statute of Timocrates, which bids him nominate sureties whenever he likes, but says nothing about custody in the meantime, which gives no instruction for imprisonment in case you reject the sureties, which is, in short, a sort of universal talisman for would-be evil-doers.