Greek Texts & Translations

59.104Once more I would have you observe in what way you granted the right to share citizenship with you to men who had thus signally manifested their good will toward your people, and who sacrificed all their possessions and their children and their wives. The decrees which you passed will make the law plain to everybody, and you will know that I am speaking the truth.

Take this decree, please, and read it to the jury.Decree Regarding the Plataeans

On motion of Hippocrates it is decreed that the Plataeans shall be Athenians from this day, and shall have full rights as citizens, and that they shall share in all the privileges in which the Athenians share, both civil and religious, save any priesthood or religious office which belongs to a particular family, and that they shall not be eligible to the office of the nine archons but their descendants shall be. And the Plataeans shall be distributed among the demes and the tribes; and after they have been so distributed, it shall no longer be lawful for any Plataean to become an Athenian, unless he wins the gift from the people of Athens.

59.105You see, men of Athens, how well and how justly the orator framed the decree in the interest of the people of Athens by requiring that the Plataeans, after receiving the gift, should first undergo the scrutiny in the court, man by man, in order to show whether each man was a Plataean and one of the friends of the city, so as to avoid the danger that many might use this pretext to acquire Athenian citizenship; and by requiring further ^note that the names of those who had passed the scrutiny should be inscribed upon a pillar of marble and should be set up in the Acropolis near the temple of the goddess, to the end that the favor granted to them should be preserved for their descendants and that each one of these might be in a position to prove his relationship to one of those receiving the grant. 59.106And he does not suffer anyone to become an Athenian in the later period, unless he be made such at the time and be approved by the court, for fear that numbers of people, by claiming to be Plataeans, might acquire for themselves the right of citizenship. And furthermore, he defined at once in the decree the rule applying to the Plataeans in the interest of the city and of the gods, declaring that it should not be permitted to any of them to be drawn by lot for the office of the nine archons or for any priesthood, but that their descendants might be so drawn, if they were born from mothers who were of Attic birth and were betrothed according to the law.

59.107Is not this a monstrous thing? In the case of those who were neighbors and who had shown themselves of all the Greeks by common consent to have conferred the greatest benefits upon your state, you thus carefully and accurately defined regarding each one the terms on which they should receive the gift of citizenship; are you then thus shamefully and recklessly to let off unpunished a woman who has openly played the harlot throughout the whole of Greece, who treats the city with outrage and the gods with impiety, and who is a citizen neither by birth nor by the gift of the people? 59.108Where has this woman not prostituted herself? To what place has she not gone in quest of her daily wage? Has she not been everywhere in the Peloponnesus, in Thessaly and in Magnesia ^note in the company of Simus of Larisa ^note and Eurydamas son of Medeius, in Chios ^note and most of Ionia, following in the train of Sotadas the Cretan, and was she not let out for hire by Nicaretê so long as she belonged to her? What do you suppose a woman does who is subject to men who are not her kinsfolk, and who follows in the train of him who pays her? Does she not serve all the lusts of those who deal with her? Will you, then, declare by your vote that a woman of this stamp, who is known by everybody beyond all question to have plied her trade the whole world over, is an Athenian citizen? 59.109What honorable deed will you say that you have done, when people ask you, or with what shame and impiety will you yourselves say that you are not chargeable? For up to the time when this woman was indicted and brought to trial, so that you all learned who she was and what acts of impiety she had committed, the crimes were her own, and the state was merely guilty of neglect; and some of you knew nothing of the matter, and others learning of it expressed their indignation in words but in fact had no means of dealing with her, seeing that nobody brought her to trial or gave an opportunity of casting a vote regarding her. But now that you all know the facts and have got her in your own hands, and have the power to punish her, the sin against the gods becomes your own, if you fail to do so.