Against Timarchus
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Original / primary: Perseus Eng2
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Depositions I will now show you that his father had not a little ready money, which the defendant has squandered. For the father, afraid of the special services to which he would be liable,The special demands made by the state on the rich citizens, like the trierarchy, choregia, etc. sold the property that he owned (with the exception of the items I have mentioned)—a piece of land in Cephisia, another in Amphitrope, and two workshops at the silver mines, one of them in Aulon, the other near the tomb of Thrasyllus.
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How it was that the father became so well-to-do I will tell you. There were three brothers in this family, Eupolemus, the gymnastic trainer, Arizelus,the father of the defendant, and Arignotus, who is still living, an old man now, and blind. Of these, Eupolemus was the first to die, before the estate had been divided; next, Arizelus, the father of Timarchus. So long as Arizelus lived, he managed the whole estate, because of the ill-health of Arignotus and the trouble with his eyes, and because Eupolemus was dead. By agreement with Arignotus he regularly gave him a sum of money for his support.
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then Arizelus, the father of the defendant Timarchus, died also. In the first years thereafter, so long as the defendant was a child, Arignotus received from the guardians
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all that one could ask. But after Timarchus was enrolled in the citizens’ list, and had come into control of the estate, he thrust aside this old and unfortunate man, his own uncle, and made way with the estate. He gave nothing to Arignotus for his support, but was content to see him, fallen from such wealth, now receiving the alms that the city gives to disabled paupers.
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finally—and most shameful of all—when the old man’ s name had been omitted at a revision of the list of pauper-pensioners, and he had laid a petition before the senate to have his dole restored, the defendant, who was a member of the senate, and one of the presiding officers that day, did not deign to speak for him, but let him lose his monthly pension.
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To prove the truth of what I say, call,if you please, Arignotus of Sphettus, and read his affidavit.
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Affidavit But perhaps someone may say that after selling his father’ s house he bought another one somewhere else in the city, and that in place of the suburban estate and the land at Alopeke, and the slaves and the rest, he made investments in connection with the silver mines, as his father had done before him. No, he has nothing left, not a house, not an apartment, not a piece of ground, no slaves, no money at interest, nor anything else from which honest men get a living. On the contrary, in place of his patrimony, the resources he has left are lewdness, calumny, impudence, wantonness, cowardice, effrontery, a face that knows not the blush of shame—all that would produce the lowest and most unprofitable citizen.
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But it is not only his patrimony that he has wasted, but also the common possessions of the state, your possessions, so far as they have ever come under his control. You see for yourselves how young he is, and yet there is not a public office which he has not held, not one of them by lot or by election, but every one by purchase, in defiance of the laws. The most of them I will pass over, and mention two or three only.
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He held the office of auditor, and did the state serious injury by taking bribes from office holders who had been dishonest,
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though his specialty was the blackmailing of innocent men who were to appear before the auditing board. He held a magistracy in
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Andros
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, which he bought for thirty minas, borrowing the money at nine obols on the mina,
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and thus he made your allies a ready source of supply for his own lusts. And in his treatment of the wives of free men he showed such licentiousness as no other man ever did. Of these men I call no one into court to testify publicly to his own misfortune, which he has chosen to cover in silence, but I leave it to you to investigate this matter.
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But what do you expect? If a man at Athens not only abuses other people, but even his own body, here where there are laws, where you are looking on, where his personal enemies are on the watch, who would expect that same man, when he had received impunity and authority and office, to have placed any limit on his license? By Zeus and Apollo, many a time before now have I marvelled at the good fortune of your city, shown on many other occasions, but not least in this, that in those days he found nobody to whom he could sell the state of Andros!
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But, you say, although he was worthless when he held office alone, yet when he was associated with others he was all right! How so? This man, fellow citizens, became a member of the senate in the archsonship of Nicophemus.
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Now to recount all the rascalities of which he was guilty in that year would be too large an undertaking for the small fraction of a day; but those which are most germane to the charge that underlies the present trial, I will relate in a few words.
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in the same year in which Timarchus was a member of the senate, Hegesandrus, the brother of Crobylus, was a treasurer of the funds of the goddess,
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and together, in right friendly comradeship, they were in the act of stealing a thousand drachmas which belonged to the city. But a reputable man, Pamphilus of the deme Acherdous, who had had some trouble with the defendant and was angry with him, found out what was going on, and at a meeting of the assembly arose and said,
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Fellow citizens, a man and a woman are conspiring to steal one thousand drachmas of yours.
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then you in astonishment cried,
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How ‘a man and a woman,’ what are you talking about?
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after a little he went on:
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Don’ t you understand,
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said he,
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what I mean? The man is our friend Hegesandrus there, a man now, though he too used to be a woman, Laodamas’ s woman; as for the woman, she is Timarchus yonder. How the money is being stolen I will tell you.
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He then proceeded to give a full account of the matter, and in a way that showed that there was no guesswork about it. After he had given you this information,
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What is it, fellow citizens,
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said he,
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that I advise? If the senate sustains the charge against this man and expels him, and then hands him over to the courts, give the senate the usual testimonial;At the close of their year of office the senate had become accustomed to expect a vote of the popular assembly bestowing a crown (garland) as a testimonial for their services. but if they fail to punish him, refuse to give it, and lay up this thing against them for that day.
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after this, when the senate had returned to the senate chamber,
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they expelled him on the preliminary ballot, but took him back on the final vote.
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I must tell you, however unpleasant it is to mention it, that for their failure to hand him over to the courts, or even to expel him from the senate chamber, they failed to receive the usual testimonial. I beg you therefore, fellow citizens, not to present the spectacle of showing resentment toward the senate, and depriving five hundred citizens of a crown because they failed to punish the defendant, and then letting him go free yourselves; and I beg you not to preserve for the popular assembly a public man who has proved useless to the senate.
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But, you say, though such is his record in the offices filled by lot, he has been a better man in the elective offices.
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Why, who of you has not heard of his notorious conviction for stealing? You will recall that you sent him as an inspector of the mercenary troops in
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Eretria
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.
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He and he only of the board of inspectors acknowledged that he had taken money, and made no defence against the charge, but immediately admitted his guilt, making his plea only as to the penalty. You punished those who denied their guilt with a fine of a talent apiece, but him with half a talent. Whereas the laws command that thieves who admit their guilt shall be punished with death; it is those who deny their guilt that are to be put on trial.
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In consequence of this experience so great became his contempt for you that immediately, on the occasion of the revision of the citizen lists, he gathered in two thousand drachmas. For he asserted that Philotades of Cydathenaeon, a citizen, was a former slave of his own, and he persuaded the members of the deme to disfranchise him. He took charge of the prosecution in court,
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and after he had taken the sacred offerings in his hand and sworn that he had not taken a bribe and would not,
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and though he swore by the usual gods of oaths
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and called down destruction on his own head, yet it has been proved that he received twenty minas from Leuconides, the brother-in-law of Philotades, at the hands of Philemon the actor, which money he soon spent on his mistress Philoxene. And so he broke his oath and abandoned the case. To prove that I speak the truth please call Philemon, who paid over the money, and Leuconides, the brother-in-law of Philotades, and read the copy of the agreement by which he effected the sale of the case.
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Affidavits. Agreement. Now what manner of man he has shown himself to be in his dealings with his fellow citizens and his own family, how shamefully he has wasted his patrimony, how he has submitted to the abuse of his own body, all this you knew as well as I, before ever I spoke, but my account of it has sufficiently refreshed your memory. Two points of my plea remain, and I pray to all the gods and goddesses that I may be enabled to speak regarding them as I have planned to do, for the public good; and I should like you to give attention to what I am about to say, and to follow me with willing mind.
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The first of these points is an anticipation of the defence which I hear he is about to offer, for I fear that if I neglect this topic, that man who professes to teach the young the tricks of speech
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may mislead you by some artifice, and so defraud the state. My second point is an exhortation of the citizens to virtue. And I see many young men present in court, and many of their elders, and not a few citizens of other states of
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Hellas
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, gathered here to listen. Do not imagine that they have come to look at me.
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Nay, rather have they come to find out about you, whether you not only know how to make good laws, but also are able to distinguish between good conduct and bad; whether you know how to honor good men; and whether you are willing to punish those who make their own life a reproach to the city. I will first speak to you about the defence.
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The eminent orator Demosthenes says that you must either wipe out your laws, or else no attention must be paid to my words. For he is amazed, he says, if you do not all remember that every single year the senate farms out the tax on prostitutes, and that the men who buy this tax do not guess, but know precisely, who they are that follow this profession. When, therefore, I have dared to bring impeachment against Timarchus for having prostituted himself, in order that I may deprive him of the right to address the people in assembly, Demosthenes says that the very act complained of calls, not for an accuser’ s arraignment, but for the testimony of the tax-gatherer who collected this tax from Timarchus.
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Now, fellow citizens, see whether the reply that I make seems to you frank and straightforward. For I am ashamed in the city’ s behalf, if Timarchus,the counsellor of the people, the man who dares to go out into Hellas on their embassies, if this man, instead of undertaking to clear his record of the whole matter, shall ask us to specify the localities where he plied his trade, and to say whether the tax collectors have ever collected the prostitutes’ licence from him.
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For your sakes pray let him give up such defence as that! But I myself will suggest to you, Timarchus, a different line of defence, which is honorable and fair, and you will adopt it, if you are conscious of having done nothing shameful. Come, dare to look the jury in the face and say that which a decent man ought to say of his youth: Fellow citizens, I have been brought up as boy and youth among you; how I have spent my time is no secret to you, and you see me with you in your assemblies.
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Now if I were defending myself before any other set of men on the charge on which I stand accused, I think your testimony would readily suffice to refute the words of my accuser. For if any such act has been committed by me, nay rather if my life has exhibited to you even any resemblance to that of which he accuses me, I feel that the rest of my life is not worth living; I freely concede you my punishment, that the state may have therein a defence in the eyes of Hellas. I have not come here to beg for mercy from you; nay, do with me what you will, if you believe that I am such a man as that. This, Timarchus, is the defence of a good and decent man, a man who has confidence in his past life, and who with good reason looks with contempt upon all efforts to slander him.
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But the defence which Demosthenes persuades you to make is not for a free man, but for a prostitute—quibbling about when and where! But since you do take refuge in the names of the lodgings, demanding that in our proof we specify every single house where you plied your trade, to such an argument as that you will never again resort, if you are wise, when you have heard what I am about to say. For it is not the lodgings and the houses which give their names to the men who have lived in them, but it is the tenants who give to the places the names of their own pursuits.
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Where, for example, several men hire one house and occupy it, dividing it between them, we call it an apartment house, but where one man only dwells, a house. And if perchance a physician moves into one of these shops on the street, it is called a surgery. But if he moves out and a smith moves into this same shop, it is called a smithy; if a fuller, a laundry; if a carpenter, a carpenter’ s shop; and if a pimp and his harlots, from the trade itself it gets its name of brothel. So that you have made many a house a brothel by the facility with which you have plied your profession. Ask not, then, where it was that you practised it, but make this your defence, that you have never done the thing.
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But it seems that we are to have another argument, too, concocted by the same sophist. For he says that nothing is more unjust than common report, and he goes to the market-place for his evidence, the sort of thing that is quite in harmony with his own life. He says first
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that the apartment house in
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which is called Demon’ s is falsely named, for it does not belong to Demon. Again, that the herm called
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the Herm of Andocides
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is not that of Andocides, but a votive offering of the tribe Aegeis.
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and Demosthenes by way of a jest presents himself as an example, for he poses as a man who knows how to indulge in pleasantries and to joke about his own manner of life.
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Unless,
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he says,
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I am to answer to the name when the crowd call me, not Demosthenes, but ‘Batalus,’ just because I got that nickname from my nurse, as my baby-name.
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And he says that if Timarchus did develop into a handsome youth, and if he is jeered at through slanderous interpretation of that fact, and not because of his own actions, surely he ought not for that reason to fall into misfortune.
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But, Demosthenes, in the case of votive offerings, houses, estates, and all dumb objects in general, I do indeed hear many names applied, ever changing, never twice the same; for in them are no actions good or bad, but the man who happens to have become connected with them, whoever he may be, gives them a name according to the greatness of his own reputation. But in the case of the life and conduct of men, a common report which is unerring does of itself spread abroad throughout the city; it causes the private deed to become matter of public knowledge, and many a time it even prophesies what is about to be.
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to manifest and so far from being fabricated is this statement of mine, that you will find that both our city and our forefathers dedicated an altar to Common Report, as one of the greatest gods;
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and you will find that Homer again and again in the
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Iliad
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says, of a thing that has not yet come to pass,
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Common Report came to the host;
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and again you will find Euripides declaring that this god is able not only to make known the living, revealing their true characters, but the dead as well, when he says,
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Common Report shows forth the good man, even though he be in the bowels of the earth;
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and Hesiod expressly represents her as a goddess, speaking in words that are very plain to those who are willing to understand, for he says,
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But Common Report dies never, the voice that tongues of many men do utter. She also is divine.
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You will find that all men whose lives have been decorous praise these verses of the poets. For all who are ambitious for honor from their fellows believe that it is from good report that fame will come to them. But men whose lives are shameful pay no honor to this god, for they believe that in her they have a deathless accuser.
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Call to mind, therefore, fellow citizens, what common report you have been accustomed to hear in the case of Timarchus. The instant the name is spoken you ask, do you not, What Timarchus do you mean? The prostitute? Furthermore, if I had presented witnesses concerning any matter, you would believe me; if then I present the god as my witness, will you refuse to believe? But she is a witness against whom it would be impiety even to bring complaint of false testimony.
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in the case of Demosthenes, too, it was common report, and not his nurse, that gave him his nickname; and well did common report name him Batalus, for his effeminacy and lewdness! For, Demosthenes, if anyone should strip off those exquisite, pretty mantle of yours, and the soft, pretty shirts that you wear while you are writing your speeches against your friends,
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and should pass them around among the jurors, I think, unless they were informed beforehand, they would be quite at a loss to say whether they had in their hands the clothing of a man or of a woman!
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But in the course of the defence one of the generals will, as I am told, mount the platform, with head held high and a self-conscious air, as one who should say, Behold the graduate of the wrestling schools, and the student of philosophy! And he will undertake to throw ridicule upon the whole idea of the prosecution, asserting that this is no legal process that I have devised, but the first step in a dangerous decline in the culture of our youth.
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He will cite first those benefactors of yours, Harmodius and Aristogeiton, describing their fidelity to one another, and telling how in their case this relationship proved the salvation of the state.
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Indeed, they say he will not even spare the poems of Homer or the names of the heroes, but will celebrate the friendship between Patroclus and Achilles, which, we are told, had its source in passion. And he will pronounce an encomium on beauty now, as though it were not recognised long since as a blessing, if haply it be united with morality. For he says that if certain men by slandering this beauty of body shall cause beauty to be a misfortune to those who possess it, then in your public verdict you will contradict your personal prayers.
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For you seem to him, he says, in danger of being strangely inconsistent; for when you are about to beget children, you pray one and all that your sons still unborn may be fair and beautiful in person, and worthy of the city; and yet when you have sons already born, of whom the city may well be proud, if by their surpassing beauty and youthful charm they infatuate one person or another, and become the subject of strife because of the passion they inspire, these sons, as it seems, you propose to deprive of civic rights—because Aeschines tells you to do it.
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And just here I understand he is going to carry the war into my territory, and ask me if I am not ashamed on my own part, after having made a nuisance of myself in the gymnasia and having been many times a lover, now to be bringing the practice into reproach and danger. And finally—so I am told—in an attempt to raise a laugh and start silly talk among you, he says he is going to exhibit all the erotic poems I have ever addressed to one person or another, and he promises to call witnesses to certain quarrels and pommellings in which I have been involved in consequence of this habit.
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Now as for me, I neither find fault with love that is honorable, nor do I say that those who surpass in beauty are prostitutes. I do not deny that I myself have been a lover and am a lover to this day, nor do I deny that the jealousies and quarrels that commonly arise from the practice have happened in my case. As to the poems which they say I have composed, some I acknowledge, but as to others I deny that they are of the character that these people will impute to them, for they will tamper with them.
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The distinction which I draw is this: to be in love with those who are beautiful and chaste is the experience of a kind-hearted and generous soul; but to hire for money and to indulge in licentiousness is the act of a man who is wanton and ill-bred. And whereas it is an honor to be the object of a pure love, I declare that he who has played the prostitute by inducement of wages is disgraced. How wide indeed is the distinction between these two acts and how great the difference, I will try to show you in what I shall next say.
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your fathers, when they were laying down laws to regulate the habits of men and those acts that inevitably flow from human nature, forbade slaves to do those things which they thought ought to be done by free men. A slave, says the law, shall not take exercise or anoint himself in the wrestling-schools. It did not go on to add, But the free man shall anoint himself and take exercise; for when, seeing the good that comes from gymnastics, the lawgivers forbade slaves to take part, they thought that in prohibiting them they were by the same words inviting the free.
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again, the same lawgiver said, A slave shall not be the lover of a free boy nor follow after him, or else he shall receive fifty blows of the public lash. But the free man was not forbidden to love a boy, and associate with him, and follow after him, nor did the lawgiver think that harm came to the boy thereby, but rather that such a thing was a testimony to his chastity. But, I think, so long as the boy is not his own master and is as yet unable to discern who is a genuine friend, and who is not, the law teaches the lover self-control, and makes him defer the words of friendship till the other is older and has reached years of discretion; but to follow after the boy and to watch over him the lawgiver regarded as the best possible safeguard and protection for chastity.
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and so it was that those benefactors of the state, Harmodius and Aristogeiton, men pre-eminent for their virtues, were so nurtured by that chaste and lawful love—or call it by some other name than love if you like—and so disciplined, that when we hear men praising what they did, we feel that words are inadequate to the eulogy of their deeds.
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But since you make mention of Achilles and Patroclus, and of Homer and the other poets—as though the jury were men innocent of education, while you are people of a superior sort, who feel yourselves quite beyond common folks in learning—that you may know that we too have before now heard and learned a little something, we shall say a word about this also. For since they undertake to cite wise men, and to take refuge in sentiments expressed in poetic measures, look, fellow citizens, into the works of those who are confessedly good and helpful poets, and see how far apart they considered chaste men, who love their like, and men who are wanton and overcome by forbidden lusts.
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I will speak first of Homer, whom we rank among the oldest and wisest of the poets. Although he speaks in many places of Patroclus and Achilles, he hides their love and avoids giving a name to their friendship, thinking that the exceeding greatness of their affection is manifest to such of his hearers as are educated men.
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For Achilles says somewhere in the course of his lament for the death of Patroclus, as recalling one of the greatest of sorrows, that unwillingly he has broken the promise he had given to Menoetius, the father of Patroclus; for he had promised to bring his son back safe to Opus, if he would send him along with him to Troy, and entrust him to his care. It is evident from this that it was because of love that he undertook to take care of him.
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But the verses, which I am about to recite, are these:
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Ah me, I rashly spoke vain words that day
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When in his halls I cheered Menoetius.
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I told the hero I would surely bring
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His famous son to Opus back again,
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When he had ravaged Ilium, and won
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His share of spoil. But Zeus does not fulfil
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To men their every hope. For fate decrees
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That both of us make red one spot of earth.
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Hom. Il. 324-329
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And indeed not only here do we see his deep distress, but he mourned so sorely for him, that although his mother Thetis cautioned him and told him that if he would refrain from following up his enemies and leave the death of Patroclus unavenged, he should return to his home and die an old man in his own land, whereas if he should take vengeance, he should soon end his life, he chose fidelity to the dead rather than safety. And with such nobility of soul did he hasten to take vengeance on the man who slew his friend, that when all tried to comfort him and urged him to bathe and take food, he swore that he would do none of these things until he had brought the head of Hector to the grave of Patroclus.
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And when he was sleeping by the funeral pyre, as the poet says, the ghost of Patroclus stood before him, and stirred such memories and laid upon Achilles such injunctions, that one may well weep, and envy the virtue and the friendship of these men. He prophesies that Achilles too is not far from the end of life, and enjoins upon him, if it he in any wise possible, to make provision that even as they had grown up and lived together, even so when they are dead their bones may be in the same coffer.
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weeping, and recalling the pursuits which they had followed together in life, he says, Never again shall we sit together alone as in the old days, apart from our other friends, and take high counsel, feeling, I believe, that this fidelity and affection were what they would long for most. But that you may hear the sentiments of the poet in verse also, the clerk shall read to you the verses on this theme which Homer composed.
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read first the verses about the vengeance on Hector.
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But since, dear comrade, after thee I go
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Beneath the earth, I will not bury thee
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Till here I bring thee Hector’ s head and arms,
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The spoils of that proud prince who took thy life.
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Hom. Il. 18.333-35
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Now read what Patroclus says in the dream about their common burial and about the intercourse that they once had with one another.
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For we no longer as in life shall sit
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Apart in sweet communion. Nay, the doom
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Appointed me at birth has yawned for me.
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And fate has destined thee, Achilles, peer
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Of gods, to die beneath the wall of Troy’ s
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Proud lords, fighting for fair-haired Helen’ s sake.
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More will I say to thee, pray heed it well:
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Let not my bones be laid apart from thine,
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Achilles, but that thou and I may be
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In common earth, I beg that I may share
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That golden coffer which thy mother brought
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To be thine own, even as we in youth
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Grew up together in thy home. My sire
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Menoetius brought me, a little lad, from home,
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From Opus, to your house, for sad bloodshed,
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That day, when, all unwitting, in childish wrath
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About the dice, I killed Amphidamas’ son.
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The knightly Peleus took me to his home
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And kindly reared me, naming me thy squire.
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So let one common coffer hide our bones.
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Hom. Il. 23.77
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Now to show that it was possible for him to have been saved had he refrained from avenging the death of Patroclus, read what Thetis says.
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Ah me, my son, swift fate indeed will fall
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On thee, if thou dost speak such words. For know,
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Swift after Hector’ s death fate brings thine own.
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To her divine Achilles, swift of foot,
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In turn made answer. Straightway let me die,
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For when my friend was slain, my dearest friend,
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It was not granted me to succor him.
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Hom. Il. 18.95
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Again, Euripides, a poet than whom none is wiser, considering chaste love to be one of the most beautiful things, says somewhere,
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making love a thing to be prayed for:
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There is a love that makes men virtuous
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And chaste, an envied gift. Such love I crave.
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Euripides
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Again the same poet, in the
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Phoenix
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,
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expresses his opinion, making defence against false charges brought by the father, and trying to persuade men habitually to judge, not under the influence of suspicion or of slander, but by a man’ s life:
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Many a time ere now have I been made
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The judge in men’ s disputes, and oft have heard
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For one event conflicting witnesses.
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And so, to find the truth, I, as do all
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Wise men, look sharp to see the character
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That marks the daily life, and judge by that.
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The man who loves companionship of knaves
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I care not to interrogate. What need
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Is there? I know too well the man is such
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As is the company he loves to keep.
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Euripides
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Examine the sentiments, fellow citizens, which the poet expresses. He says that before now he has been made judge of many cases, as you today are jurors; and he says that he makes his decisions, not from what the witnesses say, but from the habits and associations of the accused; he looks at this, how the man who is on trial conducts his daily life, and in what manner he administers his own house, believing that in like manner he will administer the affairs of the state also; and he looks to see with whom he likes to associate. And, finally, he does not hesitate to express the opinion that a man is like those whose company he loves to keep. It is right, therefore, that in judging Timarchus you follow the reasoning of Euripides.
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How has he administered his own property? He has devoured his patrimony, he has consumed all the wages of his prostitution and all the fruits of his bribery, so that he has nothing left but his shame. With whom does he love to be? Hegesandrus! And what are Hegesandrus’ habits? The habits that exclude a man by law from the privilege of addressing the people. What is it that I say against Timarchus, and what is the charge that I have brought? That Timarchus addresses the people, a man who has made himself a prostitute and has consumed his patrimony. And what is the oath that you have taken? To give your verdict on the precise charges that are presented by the prosecution.
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But not to dwell too long on the poets, I will recite to you the names of older and well-known men, and of youths and boys, some of whom have had many lovers because of their beauty, and some of whom, still in their prime, have lovers today, but not one of whom ever came under the same accusations as Timarchus. Again, I will tell over to you in contrast men who have prostituted themselves shamefully and notoriously, in order that by calling these to mind you may place Timarchus where he belongs.
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First I will name those who have lived the life of free and honorable men. You know, fellow citizens, Crito, son of Astyochus, Pericleides of Perithoedae, Polemagenes, Pantaleon, son of Cleagoras, and Timesitheus the runner, men who were the most beautiful, not only among their fellow citizens, but in all Hellas, men who counted many a man of eminent chastity as lover; yet no man ever censured them.
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and again, among the youths and those who are still boys, first, you know the nephew of Iphicrates, the son of Teisias of Rhamnos, of the same name as the defendant. He, beautiful to look upon, is so far from reproach, that the other day at the rural Dionysia when the comedies were being played in Collytus, and when Parmenon the comic actor addressed a certain anapaestic verse to the chorus, in which certain persons were referred to as big Timarchian prostitutes, nobody thought of it as aimed at the youth, but, one and all, as meant for you, so unquestioned is your title to the practice. Again, Anticles, the stadium runner, and Pheidias,the brother of Melesias. Although I could name many others, I will stop, lest I seem to be in a way courting their favor by my praise.
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But as to those men who are kindred spirits with Timarchus, for fear of arousing their enmity I will mention only those toward whom I am utterly indifferent. Who of you does not know Diophantes, called
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the orphan,
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who arrested the foreigner and brought him before the archon, whose associate on the bench was Aristophon of Azenia?
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For Diophantes accused the foreigner of having cheated him out of four drachmas in connection with this practice, and he cited the laws that command the archon to protect orphans, when he himself had violated the laws that enjoin chastity. Or what Athenian was not indignant at Cephisodorus, called Molon’ s son, for having ruined his surpassing beauty by a most infamous life? Or Mnesitheus, known as the cook’ s son? Or many others, whose names I am willing to forget?
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For I have no desire to tell over the whole list of them one by one in a spirit of bitterness. Nay, rather I could wish that I might be at a loss for such examples in my speech, for I love my city. But since we have selected for special mention a few from each of the two classes, on the one side men who have been loved with a chaste love, and on the other men who sin against themselves, now let me ask you this question, and pray answer me: To which class do you assign Timarchus—to those who are loved, or to those who are prostitutes? You see, Timarchus, you are not to be permitted to desert the company which you have chosen and go over to the ways of free men.
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But if they shall undertake to say that no man has been a prostitute unless he was hired under contract, and if they demand that I produce writings and witnesses, I ask you first to call to mind the laws concerning prostitution; in them the lawgiver has nowhere made mention of contracts, for he did not inquire whether it was by contract that a person had defiled himself, but in comprehensive terms, no matter how the deed is done, he commands that the man who did it shall take no part in public affairs. And he is right; for the man who in his youth was led by shameful indulgence to surrender honorable ambition, that man, he believed, ought not in later life to be possessed of the citizen’ s privileges.
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In the second place, it is easy to demonstrate the folly of this plea. For we should all acknowledge this, that we enter into contracts because we do not trust one another, the object being that the party who has not violated the written terms may receive satisfaction by verdict of the courts from the one who has. If, therefore, this business needs the help of the courts, those who have served as prostitutes by contract, in case they are wronged, have left them, according to the argument of the defendants, recourse to the protection of the laws. And what would be the plea that either side would advance? Imagine the case, not as something that I am telling you, but as going on before your eyes.
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Assume that the man who hired the other is in the right as regards the fact and the man who was hired is in the wrong and has no ground to stand on; or assume the opposite, that the man who was hired is fair and fulfils his engagement, but the man who has plucked the flower of his youth and hired him has broken his word; then imagine that you yourselves are sitting as jury. Now the elder man, when his time allowance and the right to speak are given him,
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will press his accusation vigorously, and looking, of course, into your faces, he will say,
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Fellow citizens, I hired Timarchus to serve me as a prostitute according to the contract that is deposited with Demosthenes
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—there is no reason why that statement might not be made!—
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but he fails to carry out his engagement with me.
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And now, of course, he proceeds to describe this engagement to the jury, telling what it is that a man of that sort is expected to do. Thereupon will not the man be stoned who has hired an Athenian contrary to the laws, and will he not leave the court-room not only sentenced to pay his fine,
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but also convicted of wanton outrage?
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But suppose it is not this man, but the one who was hired, that is bringing suit. Now let him come forward and speak—or else let the wise Batalus speak in his stead, that we may know what he will find to say!
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Gentlemen of the jury, so-and-so
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—it does not matter who—
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hired me to be his prostitute for money, and I have done, and still continue to do, according to the terms of the contract, all that a prostitute is under obligation to do; he, however, fails to fulfil the agreement.
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Will he not immediately have to face a loud protest from the jurors? For who will not say,
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And then do you thrust yourself into the market-place, do you put on a garland,See the note on Aeschin. 1.19. do you attempt to do anything else that the rest of us do?
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His contract, you see, is of no use to him.
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Now let me tell you how it happens that it has become the prevailing custom to say, that persons have in the past become prostitutes under written contract. One of our citizens (I will not name him, for I have no desire to make myself hated), foreseeing none of the consequences which I have just described to you, is said to have served as prostitute according to a contract deposited with Anticles. Now, since he was not a private citizen, but active in politics and subject to scurrilous attack, he caused the city to become accustomed to this expression, and that is the reason why some men ask whether in a given case the practice has been by written contract. But the lawgiver did not care how the thing was brought about; on the contrary, if there is a letting for hire in any way whatsoever, the man who does the deed is condemned by him to disgrace.
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But nevertheless, although all this is so plainly defined, many irrelevant arguments will be invented by Demosthenes. Possibly, when he sticks to his subject, we might be less indignant with him for the animosity he shows; but when, to the injury of our national rights, he foists in matters that do not belong to the case, then one may well be angry. Philip will be largely in evidence, and the name of Philip’ s son Alexander is going to be mixed up in it. For in addition to all the rest that is bad in him, this Demosthenes is an ill-mannered and boorish sort of person.
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His offensive talk against Philip is foolish and out of place, but not so serious a mistake as that which I am about to mention. For confessedly he will be making his slanderous charges against a man—he who is himself no man. But when he insinuates shameful suspicions against the boy, by deliberately applying to him words of double meaning, he makes our city ridiculous.
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For, under the impression that he is hurting me with reference to the accounting which I am about to render for my service on the embassy,
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he says that when the other day he himself was describing the boy Alexander, telling how at a certain banquet of ours he played the cithara, reciting certain passages in which there were thrusts at another boy, and when he reported to the senate what he himself happened to know about the incident, I got angry at his jests at the expense of the boy,
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as though I were not merely a member of the embassy, but one of the boy’ s own family.
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Now I naturally have had no conversation with Alexander, because of his youth, but Philip I do praise now because of his auspicious words, and if in what he does toward us in the future he shall fulfil the promise of what he now says, he will make praise of him a safe and easy thing. I did, indeed, rebuke Demosthenes in the senate-chamber, not because I was counting the favor of the boy, but because I felt that if you should listen to such words as his, the city would show itself as ill-behaved as the speaker.
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But, fellow citizens, I beg you not to accept their irrelevant pleas at all, in the first place for the sake of the oaths which you have sworn, in the second place that you may not be misled by a fellow who makes a trade of the manipulation of words. But I will go back a little way for your instruction. Demosthenes, after he had spent his patrimony, went up and down the city, hunting rich young fellows whose fathers were dead, and whose mothers were administering their property. I will omit many instances, and will mention only one of those who were outrageously treated.
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he discovered a household that was rich and ill-managed, the head of which was a woman, proud and of poor judgment. A fatherless young man, half crazy, was managing the estate, Aristarchus, son of Moschus. Demosthenes, pretending to be a lover of his, invited the young man to this intimacy, filling him up with empty hopes, assuring him that without any delay whatever he should become the foremost man in public life, and he showed him a list of names.
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So he became prompter and teacher of the young man in conduct which has made Aristarchus an exile from his fatherland,
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while Demosthenes, getting hold of the money that was to support him in in his banishment, has cheated him out of three talents, and, at the hands of Aristarchus, Nicodemus of Aphidna has met a violent death, poor man! after having had both eyes knocked out, and that tongue cut off with which he had been wont to speak out freely, trusting in the laws and in you.
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Did you put to death Socrates the sophist, fellow citizens, because he was shown to have been the teacher of Critias, one of the Thirty who put down the democracy, and after that, shall Demosthenes succeed in snatching companions of his own out of your hands, Demosthenes, who takes such vengeance on private citizens and friends of the people for their freedom of speech? At his invitation some of his pupils are here in court to listen to him. For with an eye to business at your expense,
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he promises them, as I understand, that he will juggle the issue and cheat your ears, and you will never know it;
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assuring them that, as soon as he shall come forward to speak, the situation shall be reversed, the defendant filled with confidence, the plaintiff confounded, frightened for his own safety; and that he will lug in my speeches, and find fault with the peace which was brought about through Philocrates and myself, until he shall call out such bursts of applause from the jurors that I will not even face him in the court-room to defend myself when I render account of my service on the embassy, but will consider myself lucky if I get off with a moderate fine instead of being punished with death.
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So I do beg you by all means not to furnish this sophist with laughter and patronage at your expense. Imagine that you see him when he gets home from the court-room, putting on airs in his lectures to his young men, and telling how successfully he stole the case away from the jury. I carried the jurors off bodily from the charges brought against Timarchus, and set them on the accuser, and Philip, and the Phocians, and I suspended such terrors before the eyes of the hearers that the defendant began to be the accuser, and the accuser to be on trial; and the jurors forgot what they were to judge; and what they were not to judge, to that they listened.
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But it is your business to take your stand against this sort of thing, and following close on his every step, to let him at no point turn aside nor persist in irrelevant talk; on the contrary, act as you do in a horse-race, make him keep to the track—of the matter at issue. If you do that, you will not fail of respect, and you will have the same sentiments when you are called to enforce laws that you had when you made them; but if you do otherwise, it will appear that when crimes are about to be committed, you foresee them and are angry, but after they have been committed, you no longer care.
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To sum it all up, if you punish the wrongdoers, your laws will be good and valid; but if you let them go, good laws, indeed, but valid no longer. And I shall not hesitate to speak out and tell you why I say this. I will explain by means of an illustration. Why do you suppose it is, fellow citizens, that the existing laws are good, but that the decrees of the city are inferior to them,
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and that the verdicts rendered in the courts are sometimes open to censure?
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I will explain to you the reason. It is because you enact the laws with no other object than justice, not moved by unrighteous gain, or by either partiality or animosity, looking solely to what is just and for the common good. And because you are, as I think, naturally, more clever than other men, it is not surprising that you pass most excellent laws. But in the meetings of the assembly and in the courts, you oftentimes lose all hold of the discussion of the matter in hand, and are led away by deceit and trickery; and you admit into your cases at law a custom that is utterly unjust, for you allow the defendants to bring counter accusations against the complainants.
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and when you have been drawn away from the defence itself, and your minds have become intent on other things, you forget the accusation entirely, and leave the court-room without having received satisfaction from either party—not from the complainant, for you are given no opportunity to vote with reference to him, and not from the defendant, for by his extraneous charges he has brushed aside the original complaints against himself, and gone out of court scot-free. Thus the laws are losing their force, the democracy is being undermined, and the custom is steadily gaining ground. For you sometimes thoughtlessly listen to mere talk that is unsupported by a good life.
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Not so the Lacedaemonians (and it is well to imitate virtue even in a foreigner). For instance, when a certain man had spoken in the assembly of the Lacedaemonians, a man of shameful life but an exceedingly able speaker, and when, we are told, the Lacedaemonians were on the point of voting according to his advice, a man came forward from the Council of Elders
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—a body of men whom they reverence and fear, whose age gives its name to that office which they consider the highest, and whom they appoint from among those who have been men of sobriety from boyhood to old age—one of these, it is said, came forward and vehemently rebuked the Lacedaemonians and denounced them in words like these: that the homes of
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would not long remain unravaged if the people folIowed such advisers in their assemblies.
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at the same time he called forward another of the Lacedaemonians, a certain man who was not gifted in speech, but brilliant in war and distinguished for justice and sobriety, and he ordered him to express as best he could the same sentiments that the former orator had uttered, In order, he explained, that a good man may speak before the Lacedaemonians vote, but that they may not even receive into their ears the voices of proven cowards and rascals. Such was the advice that the old man, who had lived a pure life from childhood, gave to his fellow citizens. He would have been quick, indeed, to allow Timarchus or the low-lived Demosthenes to take part in public affairs!
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But that I may not seem to be flattering the Lacedaemonians, I will make mention of our ancestors also. For so stern were they toward all shameful conduct, and so precious did they hold the purity of their children, that when one of the citizens found that his daughter had been seduced, and that she had failed to guard well her chastity till the time of marriage, he walled her up in an empty house with a horse, which he knew would surely kill her, if she were shut in there with him. And to this day the foundations of that house stand in your city, and that spot is called the place of the horse and the maid.
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and Solon, the most famous of lawgivers, has written in ancient and solemn manner concerning orderly conduct on the part of the women. For the woman who is taken in the act of adultery he does not allow to adorn herself, nor even to attend the public sacrifices, lest by mingling with innocent women she corrupt them. But if she does attend, or does adorn herself, he commands that any man who meets her shall tear off her garments, strip her of her ornaments, and beat her (only he may not kill or maim her); for the lawgiver seeks to disgrace such a woman and make her life not worth the living.
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and he commands that procurers, men and women, be indicted, and if they are convicted, be punished with death, because to people who lust after sin but hesitate and are ashamed to meet one another, the procurers offer their own shamelessness for pay, and make it possible to discuss the act and to accomplish it.
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Such, then, was the judgment of your fathers concerning things shameful and things honorable; and shall their sons let Timarchus go free, a man chargeable with the most shameful practices, a creature with the body of a man defiled with the sins of a woman? In that case, who of you will punish a woman if he finds her in wrong doing? Or what man will not be regarded as lacking intelligence who is angry with her who errs by an impulse of nature,while he treats as adviser
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the man who in despite of nature has sinned against his own body?
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How will each man of you feel as he goes home from court? For the person who is on trial is no obscure man, but well known; the law governing the official scrutiny of public speakers is not a trivial law, but a most excellent one; and we must expect that the boys and young men will ask the members of their families how the case was decided.
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What then, pray, are you going to answer, you in whose hands the decision now rests, when your sons ask you whether you voted for conviction or acquittal? When you acknowledge that you set Timarchus free, will you not at the same time be overturning our whole system of training the youth? What use is there in keeping attendants for our children, or setting trainers and teachers over them, when those who have been entrusted with the laws allow themselves to be turned into crooked paths of shame?
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I am also surprised, fellow citizens, that you who hate the brothel-keeper propose to let the willing prostitute go free. And it seems that a man who is not to be permitted to be a candidate for election by lot for the priesthood of any god, as being impure of body as that is defined by the laws, this same man is to write in our decrees prayers to the August Goddesses
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in behalf of the state. Why then do we wonder at the futility of our public acts, when the names of such public men as this stand at the head of the people’ s decrees? And shall we send abroad as ambassador a man who has lived shamefully at home, and shall we continue to trust that man in matters of the greatest moment? What would he not sell who has trafficked in the shame of his own body? Whom would he pity who has had no pity on himself?
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To whom of you is not the bestiality of Timarchus well known? For just as we recognize the athlete, even without visiting the gymnasia, by looking at his bodily vigor, even so we recognize the prostitute, even without being present at his act, by his shamelessness, his effrontery, and his habits. For he who despises the laws and morality in matters of supreme importance, comes to be in a state of soul which is plainly revealed by his disorderly life.
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Many men of this sort you could find who have overthrown cities and have fallen into the greatest misfortunes themselves. For you must not imagine, fellow citizens, that the impulse to wrong doing is from the gods; nay, rather, it is from the wickedness of men; nor that ungodly men are, as in tragedy, driven and chastised by the Furies
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with blazing torches in their hands.
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No, the impetuous lusts of the body and insatiate desire—these it is that fill the robbers’ bands, that send men on board the pirates’ boats; these are, for each man, his Fury, urging him to slay his fellow citizens, to serve the tyrant, to help put down the democracy. For such men reck not of disgrace, nor yet of punishment to come, but are beguiled by the pleasures they expect if they succeed. Therefore, fellow citizens, remove from among us such natures, for so shall you turn the aspirations of the young toward virtue.
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And be assured—I earnestly beg of you to remember what I am about to say—be assured that if Timarchus shall pay the penalty for his practices, you will lay the foundation for orderly conduct in this city; but if he shall be cleared, the case had better never have been tried. For before Timarchus came to trial, the law and the name of the courts did cause some men to fear; but if the leader in indecency and the most notorious man of all shall once have been brought into court and then come safely off, many will be induced to offend; and it will finally be, not what is said, but the desperate situation, that will arouse your anger.
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therefore punish one man, and do not wait till you have a multitude to punish; and be on your guard against their machinations and their advocates. I will name no one of these, lest they make that their excuse for speaking, saying that they would not have come forward had not someone mentioned them by name. But this I will do: I will omit their names, but by describing their habits will make known their persons also. And each man will have only himself to blame if he comes up here and displays his impudence.
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three sorts of supporters, namely, are going to come into court to help the defendant: firstly, men who have squandered their patrimony by the extravagance of their daily life; secondly, men who have abused their youth and their own bodies, and now are afraid, not for Timarchus, but for themselves and their own habits, lest they one day be called to account; and still others from the ranks of the licentious, and of those who have freely associated with licentious men; for they would have certain men rely on their aid, and thus be the more ready to indulge in wrong-doing.
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therefore you hear the pleas of these men in his support, call to mind their lives, and bid those who have sinned against their own bodies to cease annoying you and to stop speaking before the people; for the law investigates, not men in private station, but those who are in public life. And tell those who have eaten up their patrimony to go to work, and find some new way to get their living. And as for the hunters of such young men as are easily trapped, command them turn their attention to the foreigners and the resident aliens, that they may still indulge their predilection, but without injuring you.
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And now I have fulfilled all my obligation to you: I have explained the laws, I have examined the life of the defendant. Now, therefore, you are judges of my words, and soon I shall be spectator of your acts, for the decision of the case is now left to your judgment. If, therefore, you do what is right and best, we on our part shall, if it be your wish, be able more zealously to call wrongdoers to account.