Demosthenes, Speeches (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose; rhetoric] [word count] [lemma count] [Dem.]. | ||
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25.1Gentlemen of the jury, as I sat here for a long time and listened with you to the speech of Lycurgus for the prosecution, I thought it in general an excellent speech; but when I observed him unduly exerting himself, I was surprised that he should not realize that the strength of our case does not really depend on the arguments that he has used or that I am going to use, but on the disposition of each juryman either to be indignant at wickedness or to condone it. 25.2For myself, I admit it was our duty to undertake the prosecution and to deliver full speeches in accordance with custom and for your information; but I feel that the case has been already decided by each one of you in his inmost conscience, and that now, if the majority of you are men disposed to admire and protect rascals, all our declamation will be wasted, but if you are disposed to hate them, then this man, please God! shall pay the penalty.
25.3Though much has been said, and all of it well said, I shall not scruple to put my own views before you, because the present suit seems to me quite different from all others. Just consider. To all our courts the juries come to learn from plaintiff and defendant the facts upon which they are to give their votes, and each litigant comes to prove that the legal right is strong on his side. 25.4But how stands it with the present trial? You who are to give the verdict have come here knowing better than we, the accusers, that this man, since he is a state-debtor and registered as such in the Acropolis, has no right to speak at all; so that each of you is in the position of an accuser, knowing the facts and not needing to be told them. 25.5But the defendant is here with nothing whatever to support his acquittal, with no sound plea based on the facts, with no past record of a decent life, with not a single point in his favour. He imagines that he may be saved by what would have frightened anyone else, though innocent; for he bases the hope of his acquittal on the enormity of his wickedness.
25.6This being so, it seems to me that one would not be wrong in saying that, while Aristogeiton is on his trial, it is your character that is being tested, your reputation that is at stake. For if you make it quite clear that you are angry at such patent and gross offences and are determined to punish them, then it will be seen that you have come here to play your true part as judges and guardians of the law. 25.7But if some other motive prevails, some motive which none would care to confess, but which your votes will betray, then I am afraid that to some you will appear to be playing the part of trainers of any citizen who has a taste for wickedness. For every bad man is in himself weak; he only becomes strong by your countenance and support. Whoever wins that support finds in it his advantage and his strength; to you who give that support, it is a source of shame.
25.8But before I speak of the private affairs of the defendant, men of
25.13Men of
Demosthenes, Speeches (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose; rhetoric] [word count] [lemma count] [Dem.]. | ||
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