Against Timocrates
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—But in fact he went out of his way to avoid the statutes of tax-farming; and, because Euctemon’s decree did authorize recovery from losers of suits according to those statutes, for that very reason he omitted to add the clause. In that manner, by cancelling the existing punishment of public defaulters without substituting any other, he makes havoc of all our business,—the Assembly, the cavalry, the Council, the sacred funds, the civil revenue. And for that offence, men of Athens, if you are wise men, he will be chastised and treated as he deserves, and so made an example to deter others from bringing in such laws.
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Not only, then, does he deprive the court of authority in respect of supplementary payments, offer immunity to defrauders of the State, cripple our national service, and undermine our financial system, but also, by abrogating the penalties imposed by the existing statutes, he has enacted his law for the benefit of swindlers, parricides, and shirkers.
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The statutes enacted by Solon, a very different legislator from the defendant, provided that if a man is convicted of theft, and not punished with death, he shall suffer imprisonment; that if a man found guilty of ill-treating his parents intrudes upon the market-place, he shall go to jail; and that if a man, having been convicted of shirking military service, behaves as though he were not disfranchised, he also shall be imprisoned. Timocrates gives impunity to all these offenders, for he abolishes imprisonment if they put in bail.
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Therefore, in my judgement )and though you may think what I am going to say rather coarse, I will say it without hesitation(, he deserves, on that very account, to be punished with death, so that he may pass this law in Hell for the benefit of the wicked, and leave us who are still alive in the continued enjoyment of our holy and righteous laws.—Read also the laws I have mentioned.Laws Concerning Theft, Maltreatment of Parents, and Desertion
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If a man has recovered the property lost, the penalty shall be twice the value of such property; if he has not recovered it, ten times the value in addition to the lawful amercement. The thief shall be kept in the stocks for five days and five nights, if an additional penalty is awarded by the court; and such additional penalty may be proposed by anyone, when the question of sentence is raised.—If any man be put under arrest after being found guilty of ill-treating his parents or of shirking service, or for entering any forbidden place after notice of outlawry, the Eleven shall put him into prison and bring him before the Court of Heliaea, and any person being a lawful prosecutor may prosecute him. If he be found guilty, the Court shall determine what penalty, corporal or pecuniary, he shall suffer; and if the penalty be pecuniary, he shall be kept in prison until he has paid the fine.
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Much alike these two legislators, Solon and Timocrates,—are they not, men of Athens? Solon aims at the reformation of the living and of the unborn; Timocrates points the scoundrels of the past to a road by which they may escape justice, and invents a scheme of impunity for malefactors present and malefactors to come, providing deliverance and reprieve for past, present, and future sinners alike.
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—What adequate satisfaction can you render, or by what punishment can you be punished as you deserve, you who, to say nothing of the rest, subvert the laws that protect old age, that compel the maintenance of parents in their lifetime, and ensure that they shall be honored with due observance when they die? How can you escape being adjudged the basest of mankind, you reprobate, who openly account thieves and scoundrels and shirkers of more value than your fatherland, and for their sake bring in a law to our detriment?
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Now I propose to reckon up how I have fulfilled the promises I made at the outset of my address. I undertook to prove that he is amenable to the indictment in every respect, first, because he legislated illegally; secondly, because his proposals were contrary to existing statutes; and thirdly, because they were injurious to the commonwealth. Well, you have now heard the statutes, and what they enjoin upon the author of a new law; and again I have satisfied you that the defendant has not observed any one of those injunctions.
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Further, you have also heard the statutes with which the defendant’s law is manifestly at variance; and you are aware that he has introduced it without repeal of those statutes. And you have certainly heard that the law is detrimental, for I have only just left off telling you so. Therefore he is unquestionably guilty on every count, and in nothing has he shown consideration or scruple; but, as it seems to me, if anything else had been forbidden by the existing statutes, he would have done that as well.
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From every point of view it is clear that he framed his proposals with a sinister purpose, and that he offends of malice prepense and not by error of judgement, especially as the character of his law is preserved down to the very last syllable. He proposed nothing that was right, nothing likely to be serviceable to you, even unintentionally. Surely you are bound to abhor and to punish a man who had no thought for wrongs done to the people, but enacted laws for the benefit of those who have injured you before and will injure you again.
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Gentlemen of the jury, I am amazed at the man’s effrontery. To think that, when he and Androtion were in office, he never had any compassion for the great body of your fellow-citizens, who were exhausted with paying income-tax, and that then when Androtion was called upon to refund money, both sacred and civil, which he had long before stolen from the State, he must needs propose a law to deprive you of the double repayment of civil, and the tenfold repayment of sacred, liabilities! Thus the whole mass of you citizens has been attacked by a man who was immediately afterwards to pretend that he had framed his law as a friend of the people.
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In my view, no punishment could be too severe for a man who, when some market-clerk, or street-inspector, or judge of a local court,—some poor, unskilled man, without experience, and appointed to his office by lot,—has been found guilty of peculation at the audits, demands from him a tenfold restitution, and has no new law to propose for the relief of such delinquents, and then, when ambassadors, elected by vote of the people, men of substance, have embezzled and long retained large sums of money, the property in part of the temples, in part of the treasury, is at great pains to invent for them a way of escape from penalties ordained both by decree and by statute.
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And yet Solon, gentlemen of the jury,—and even Timocrates cannot pretend to be a legislator of the same calibre as Solon,—so far from providing such defaulters with the means of swindling in security, actually introduced a law to ensure that they should either refrain from crime or be adequately punished. For a theft in day-time of more than fifty drachmas a man might be arrested summarily and put into custody of the Eleven. If he stole anything, however small, by night, the person aggrieved might lawfully pursue and kill or wound him, or else put him into the hands of the Eleven, at his own option. A man found guilty of an offence for which arrest is lawful was not allowed to put in bail and refund the stolen money; no, the penalty was death.
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Or suppose that he stole a cloak, or an oil-flask, or any such trifle, from the Lyceum, or the Academy, or Cynosarges, or any utensil from the gymnasia or the harbors, above the value of ten drachmas, for such thefts also Solon enacted the capital penalty. If a man was found guilty on a private prosecution for theft, while the normal penalty was double reparation, the court was empowered to add to the fine the extra penalty of imprisonment for five days and as many nights, so that everybody might see the thief in jail. You heard those laws read not long ago.
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Solon’s view was that the doer of infamous deeds ought not to get off with mere repayment of the money stolen; for it seemed to him that there would be no lack of thieves on such terms,—if they had the chance of keeping their booty if undetected, and of simply restoring it if caught. They must pay double; they must be imprisoned as well as fined, and so live in disgrace for the rest of their lives. Not so Timocrates; he made arrangements for a simple, instead of a double, reparation, and for no sort of additional penalty.
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Nor was he content to be guilty of this iniquity in respect of future offences only; he released even the man who had already committed his crime, and already been punished. I, however, used to suppose that legislators were concerned with the future, making laws to direct how people should behave, how every thing should he managed, and what should be the proper penalties for different transgressions. That is what is meant by making the laws the same for all citizens. To frame statutes for past transactions is not to legislate, but to rescue malefactors.
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You may judge that what I am telling you is true by reflecting that, if Euctemon had been convicted on the charge of illegal legislation, Timocrates would never have proposed his law, and the State would never have wanted his law; his friends would have been content to plunder the property of the State, without any concern for other people. But in fact Euctemon was acquitted and therefore Timocrates demands that your decision, the judgement of the court, and every other statute shall be invalidated, and that he and his law shall alone be authoritative.
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—And yet, Timocrates, laws which are still authoritative have given supreme authority to the gentlemen of the jury. The laws permit them, after hearing the case, to adjust their condemnation of the offender to their view of the gravity of the offence; light for light, heavy for heavy. Whenever the phrase is, what penalty, corporal or pecuniary, should be awarded, the award is at the discretion of the jury.
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You, then, abolish the corporal penalty by remitting imprisonment. For whom? For thieves and temple-robbers, for parricides, murderers, shirkers, and deserters. All such men you protect by your law. And yet does not a man who, under a free constitution, legislates, not to protect the temples, not to protect the people, but to protect such people as I have named, deserve to suffer the extreme penalty?
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—Certainly he cannot deny that such people ought to be, and that the laws make them, liable to the heaviest punishments. Neither can he deny that the men for whose protection he has invented his law are thieves and temple-robbers; for the have robbed the temples of the ten per cent due to Athena and of the two per cent due to the other gods; they keep the money in their own pockets instead of making restitution, and they have stolen the public share, which belonged to you. Their sacrilege differs from other forms of sacrilege to this extent,—that they never even paid the money into the Acropolis as they ought.
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As Heaven is my witness, gentlemen of the jury, I believe Androtion became the victim of this arrogant, overbearing temper, not by accident, but by the visitation of the gods, to the end that, as the mutilators of the statue of Victory perished by their own hands,
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so these men should perish by litigation among themselves, and should either make tenfold restitution, as the laws direct, or be cast into prison.
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I should like to make an observation about his law which occurred to my mind while I was speaking about these matters,—something quite out of the common, indeed surprisingly so. The defendant, gentlemen of the jury, has proposed that the penalty inflicted upon farmers of taxes, if they did not pay their dues, should be in accordance with the earlier statutes, in which the penalty provided is imprisonment and double restitution for men who, in consequence of losses on their contract, might possibly do the State a wrong unintentionally. On the other hand, he abolishes imprisonment for men who steal the property of the State and rob the temples of the Goddess.—If you tell us, Timocrates, that the latter are guilty of a less serious offence than the former, you must admit that you are out of your senses; and if you think their offence more serious, as indeed it is, and yet release them and refuse to release the others, is it not evident that you have sold your services to these men for a bribe?
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Another remark worth making, gentlemen of the jury, is that you are far more magnanimous than the politicians. Anyhow you do not repeal the harsh enactments made against the common people,—against those, for instance, who take fees from both parties, or attend the Assembly or sit on a jury while in debt to the treasury, or do anything else forbidden by the laws,—although you know that any man who commits one of these offences may do so because he is poor. You do not enact laws to give liberty of transgression, but rather to take it away. They, on the other hand, make laws to rescue from punishment persons guilty of the most infamous and outrageous misconduct.
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And then in private they talk insultingly about you, as though they were superior persons, though they are really behaving like ill-conditioned, ungrateful servants. Servants who have been manumitted, you know, gentlemen of the jury, are never grateful to their masters for their liberation, but hate them more bitterly than they hate anyone else, as sharing in the secret of their former servitude. In the same spirit politicians are not satisfied with having risen from poverty to affluence at the expense of the City, but calumniate the common people,—because the common people know what their style of life was when they were young and poor.
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But it would perhaps, as he may suggest, have been a great shame for Androtion to be sent to prison, or for Glaucetes, or Melanopus. No, indeed, gentlemen of the jury! It will be a far greater shame if an injured and insulted commonwealth shall exact no retribution for the Goddess or for itself. Does not imprisonment run in Androtion’s family? Why, you know yourselves that his father often went to jail for five years at a stretch; and then he was not discharged—he ran away.
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Or has he earned forgiveness by his conduct in youth? Why, he deserves imprisonment for that conduct just as much as for his embezzlements. Do you mean because he frequented the market-place before he was qualified, and with his own hands haled men of respectable life from the market-place to the jail? But there is Melanopus, you say, and what a dreadful thing it would be if Melanopus were committed to prison today!
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Well, about his father I will say nothing disrespectful; though I could tell you a long story about thieving,—however, so far as I am concerned, let his father be worthy of all the compliments that Timocrates may lavish upon him. But suppose that the son of this virtuous father was himself a rascal and a thief; suppose that he once paid a fine of three talents on conviction for treason; suppose that, after he had sat in the Allied Congress,
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the court found him guilty of embezzlement, and ordered him to make tenfold restitution; suppose that he played false when he went on embassy to
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; suppose that he swindled his own brothers—does he not deserve imprisonment all the more if his father was virtuous, and he is what he is? For my part, I fancy that, if Laches
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really was virtuous and patriotic, he should himself have sent his degenerate son to jail for implicating him in such infamous scandals. However, let us pass Melanopus by, and fix our gaze upon Glaucetes.
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Was not he the man who first ran away to Deceleia, and, with Deceleia as his base, overran and harried your country? But you all know that. Was it not he who scrupulously paid to the Spartan governor at that place tithes due upon your wives and children and all the rest of his booty;
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and yet, when you had honored him with the office of ambassador, robbed the Goddess at Athens of her tithe of the plunder he took from your enemies? Was it not he who, being appointed treasurer at the Acropolis, stole from that place those prizes of victory which our ancestors carried off from the barbarians, the throne with silver feet, and Mardonius’s scimitar, which weighed three hundred darics? These exploits, however, are so celebrated that they are known to everybody. But in everything else is he not a man of violence? Aye, he has no equal for that.
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Is it right, then, that you should deal tenderly with any one of them, and disregard for their sakes the tithes of Athena or the double repayment of public moneys? Is it right to leave unpunished the man who is exerting himself to save them? What is there, gentlemen, to prevent everybody turning knave, if knavery is to be profitable? Nothing that I can see.
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You must punish crime, not encourage it by your own teaching. Do not let them make a grievance of going to prison with your money in their pockets, but bring them under the yoke of law. People convicted under the alien acts do not think themselves aggrieved when they are kept in yonder building
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until the trial for false evidence is over; they simply stay there without expecting to get the freedom of the streets by putting in bail.
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The commonwealth, having decided to distrust them, did not choose to be cheated of retribution by the process of putting in bail, but preferred that they should stay in a place where many genuine Athenians have sojourned. Yet. people have been imprisoned there before now both for debt and on judgement, and have taken it quietly. Perhaps it is rather invidious to mention names, but I cannot help giving you a list for comparison with the men before you.
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I will not mention very ancient instances, or any earlier than the archonship of Eucleides
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; but I must observe that many men, who in their own generation were highly esteemed for their earlier conduct, were nevertheless most severely treated by the People for the offences of their later life. The commonwealth was not content with a period of honesty followed by knavery, but expected uninterrupted honesty in public dealings. The previous honesty of such a person was not, in their view, attributable to innate virtue; it was part of a scheme to attract confidence.
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But after the archonship of Eucleides, gentlemen of the jury, first, you all remember that the well-known Thrasybulus of Colyttus was twice imprisoned and condemned at both his trials before the Assembly; and yet he was one of the heroes of the march from
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and Peiraeus.
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Then there was Philepsius of Lamptra. Next take Agyrrhius of Colyttus, a good man, a liberal politician, and an ardent defender of popular rights;
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and yet even he admitted that the laws must be as binding upon him as upon people without influence, and he stayed in that building for many years, until he had repaid the money in his possession which was adjudged to be public property; nor did Callistratus, who was in power, and who was his nephew, try to make new laws to meet his particular case. Or take Myronides; he was the son of that Archinus who occupied Phyle, and whom, after the gods, we have chiefly to thank for the restoration of popular government, and who had achieved success on many occasions both as statesman and as commander.
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In spite of their merits, these men all submitted to the laws. Again, the treasurers of Athena and of the other gods, during whose term the Inner Treasury was burned down, were lodged in yonder building pending their trial; so too were the persons suspected of the corn-market frauds, and many others, gentlemen of the jury,—all better men than Androtion.
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Then if it was right that for them the old-established laws should be operative, and that they should be punished in accordance with the existing laws, can it be right that for the sake of Androtion, Glaucetes, and Melanopus, a brand-new statute should be made,—for men who have been found guilty and condemned by verdict in pursuance of old-established laws, and who are declared to be detaining sacred and public moneys? Will not Athens be a laughing-stock if she is discovered enacting laws for the deliverance of temple robbers?
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So I should say. Then do not tolerate any insult to yourselves or to the State. Remember how, no longer ago than the archonship of Evander, you put Eudemus of Cydathenaeum to death, because you held him to have proposed an objectionable statute; and that you were within an ace also of putting to death Philip, the son of Philip the ship-owner, but, by a very small majority, you accepted his own counter-assessment of the penalty, and made him pay a very heavy fine. Treat the defendant today in the same spirit of severity. And there is another consideration for you to bear in mind,—how injuriously you would have been treated by Timocrates, if he alone had been your ambassador. I really believe that there is nothing from which such a fellow would have kept his hands. Have regard also to the disposition of the man; for the law which he has had the audacity to propose is significant of his character.
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I should like, gentlemen of the jury, to give you a description of the method of legislation among the Locrians. It will do you no harm to hear an example, especially one set by a well-governed community. In that country the people are so strongly of opinion that it is right to observe old-established laws, to preserve the institutions of their forefathers, and never to legislate for the gratification of whims, or for a compromise with transgression, that if a man wishes to propose a new law, he legislates with a halter round his neck. If the law is accepted as good and beneficial, the proposer departs with his life, but, if not, the halter is drawn tight, and he is a dead man.
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In very truth they are not bold enough to propose new laws, but punctually obey the old ones. And, during quite a long series of years, we are told, gentlemen of the jury, that they have enacted only one new statute. They had a law in that country that, if any one destroyed his neighbor’s eye, he must submit to the destruction of one of his own eyes; and there was no alternative of a fine. The story goes that a man, whose enemy had only one eye, threatened to knock that one eye out.
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The one-eyed man was much perturbed by the threat, and, reflecting that his life would not be worth keeping after such a loss as that, he plucked up courage, as we are told, to introduce a law that whosoever struck out the eye of a man who had only one, should submit to the loss of both his own eyes, in order that both might suffer the same affliction. And that, according to the story, is the only new statute adopted by the Locrians for more than two hundred years.
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But in this city, gentlemen of the jury, our politicians rarely let a month go by without legislating to suit their private ends. When in office they are always haling private citizens to jail; but they disapprove of the application of the same measure of justice to themselves. They arbitrarily repeal those well-tried laws of Solon, enacted by their forefathers, and expect you to obey laws of their own, proposed to the detriment of the community.
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If, then, you decline to punish the men before you, in a very little time the People will be in slavery to those beasts of prey. But you may be sure, gentle men of the jury, that, if you are really very angry with them, their ferocity will soon be mitigated. If not, you will have plenty of ruffians to insult you under pretence of patriotic fervor.
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Let me now say a word, gentlemen of the jury, about the statute which, as I am informed, he intends to cite as a precedent and which he will claim to have followed in his own proposal. I mean the statute which contains these words: Nor will I imprison any Athenian citizen who offers three sureties taxed in the same class as himself, except any person found guilty of conspiring to betray the city or to subvert popular government, or any tax-farmer or his surety or collector being in default. Listen to my reply.
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I will say nothing about Androtion himself dragging people to prison and putting them in irons after the enactment of this law, but I must inform you to whom it really applies. This statute, gentlemen of the Jury, is not intended for the protection of people who have stood their trial and argued their case, but for those who are still untried and its purpose is that they shall not plead at a disadvantage, or even without any preparation at all, because they have been sent to jail. But Timocrates is going to speak to you of regulations made for untried culprits, as though they had been framed to include everybody.
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Let me give you a proof that my account of the matter is correct. It would not have been lawful
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for you, gentlemen of the jury, to assess any penalty, corporal or pecuniary,for imprisonment is a corporal punishment, and therefore you could not have inflicted it as a penalty, nor could it have been provided by statute, in cases where information is laid or summary arrest is allowed, that
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the Eleven shall put in the stocks any man against whom information is laid, or who has been arrested,
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if it had been unlawful to imprison any offenders other than those who conspire to betray the commonwealth, or to overthrow popular government, or tax-farmers who do not satisfy their contract.
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But as matters stand you must accept these facts as proving that imprisonment is lawful, otherwise penal sentences would at once have been entirely inoperative. In the second place, gentlemen of the jury, the formula, I will not imprison any Athenian citizen, is not in itself a statute; it is merely a phrase in the written oath taken by the Council, to prevent politicians who are in the Council from caballing to commit any citizen to prison.
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Solon therefore, wishing to deprive the Council of authority to imprison, included this formula in the Councillors’ oath; but he did not include it in the judicial oath. He thought it right that a Court of Justice should have unlimited authority, and that the convicted criminal should submit to any punishment ordered by the court. To make good this view the clerk will read the judicial oath of the Court of Heliaea. Read.
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The Oath of the Heliasts I will give verdict in accordance with the statutes and decrees of the People of Athens and of the Council of Five-hundred. I will not vote for tyranny or oligarchy. If any man try to subvert the Athenian democracy or make any speech or any proposal in contravention thereof I will not comply. I will not allow private debts to be cancelled, nor lands nor houses belonging to Athenian citizens to be redistributed. I will not restore exiles or persons under sentence of death. I will not expel, nor suffer another to expel, persons here resident in contravention of the statutes and decrees of the Athenian People or of the Council.
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I will not confirm the appointment to any office of any person still subject to audit in respect of any other office, to wit the offices of the nine Archons or of the Recorder or any other office for which a ballot is taken on the same day as for the nine Archons, or the office of Marshal, or ambassador, or member of the Allied Congress. I will not suffer the same man to hold the same office twice, or two offices in the same year. I will not take bribes in respect of my judicial action, nor shall any other man or woman accept bribes for me with my knowledge by any subterfuge or trick whatsoever.
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I am not less than thirty years old. I will give impartial hearing to prosecutor and defendant alike, and I will give my verdict strictly on the charge named in the prosecution. The juror shall swear by Zeus, Poseidon, and Demeter, and shall invoke destruction upon himself and his household if he in any way transgress this oath, and shall pray that his prosperity may depend upon his loyal observance thereof. The oath, gentlemen of the jury, does not contain the words I will not imprison any Athenian citizen. The courts alone decide every question brought to trial; and they have full authority to pass sentence of imprisonment, or any other sentence they please.
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That you are empowered to pass sentence of imprisonment I prove by this argument; and I take it that everybody will agree that to invalidate judicial decisions is monstrous, impious, and subversive of popular government. Our commonwealth, gentlemen of the jury, is administered by laws and by votes of the people; and if once decisions by vote are repealed by a new law, where will be the end of it? Can we justly call this thing a law? Is it not rather the negation of law? Does not such a lawgiver merit our strongest resentment?
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Indeed in my view he merits the severest punishment, not merely for proposing this law, but for revealing to everyone else a method of destroying the courts of Justice, restoring exiles, and introducing every sort of atrocity. If the author of this law goes on his way rejoicing, what is there, gentlemen of the jury, to prevent another man from coming forward to overthrow our most powerful institutions with a fresh statute?
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In my opinion, nothing. I have been told that in time past popular government was overthrown in this way, when indictments for illegal legislation were abolished, and courts of justice were stripped of authority. Someone may perhaps object that, when I talk of subverting popular government, I am ignoring the difference of conditions between that time and this. Yes, but no man ought even to drop the seed of such a policy in our commonwealth, though for the moment it may not germinate; rather should every man who by word or deed attempts anything of the kind be brought to justice.
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It is also proper that you should be informed how craftily he laid his plans to injure you. Having observed that everybody, whether in public life or outside it, constantly attributes all the prosperity of Athens to her laws, he began to consider how he could destroy those laws without detection, and how, even if caught in the act, he might be thought to have done nothing formidable or presumptuous.
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He invented the method which he has actually employed, that of overthrowing old laws by a new one, in the hope that his iniquities might be described as preservative. It is true that the city is preserved by laws; and the thing he introduced, though widely different from other laws, certainly was a law. He saw that the beneficent associations of that name were bound to win your approval; and he did not choose to see that in its actual effect it would be found very different.
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But tell me this,—is there any chairman or any president who would ever have put to the vote the proposals contained in his law? I should say, none. Then how did the thing slip through? He gave the name of law to his own knaveries. For these men do not injure you artlessly or casually, but deliberately and of set purpose; and I do not mean these men alone, but a great company of politicians, who will shortly appear and reinforce the defence,—not, I need hardly say, because they want to oblige Timocrates,—why should they?—but because every man of them imagines that Timocrates’ law will serve his own purposes. As these people, then, rally round one another to your prejudice, so it is your business to rally round yourselves.
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Somebody asked him for what purpose he had chosen to bring forward such a proposal, and tried to explain to him that he had a difficult task before him in this trial. His reply was: You talk like a fool. Androtion will be there to help me; and he has thought out at leisure such fine arguments on every point, that I am quite certain that no harm will come to me from this indictment.
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I am simply amazed at the effrontery of the pair of them,—of Timocrates, if he calls Androtion, and of Androtion, if he appears and speaks for the defence; for, of course, you will then have the clearest testimony that Timocrates proposed his law for the special benefit of Androtion, not as a law of general application. Nevertheless, it will be useful to you to hear a brief account of Androtion’s political performances, including those in which the defendant took part, and for which he, no less than the other, should be the just object of your detestation. I will tell you nothing that you have heard already, unless indeed any of you were in court at the trials of Euctemon.
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Let us first of all inquire into the exploit on which he chiefly prides himself,—his collection of the money which he extracted from all of you, with the help of this honorable gentleman. Having accused Euctemon of retaining revenue money in his own hands, he promised that he would either make good the charge, or pay the money out of his own pocket; and on that pretext he turned out a magistrate appointed by lot, and insinuated himself into the tax-collecting business. He also proposed the appointment of Timocrates, pleading his own ill-health; I shall be glad of his help in the work of the office, he said.
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He made a speech to the people on that occasion, advising you that you had the choice of three courses, either to break up the processional plate, or to pay your taxes over again, or to recover arrears from defaulters. You naturally preferred to collect your debts; and as by virtue of his promises he had the upper hand, and enjoyed special powers to suit the emergency, he did not think proper to observe the statutes made and provided for such business, nor, if he considered them unsatisfactory, to propose new ones. Instead of that, he moved at the Assembly some truculent and unconstitutional decrees, and used those decrees for jobbery, with Timocrates as his jackal.
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With the help of this man he has stolen a great deal of your property, for he had included in his decree an order that the police-magistrates, the receivers, and their clerks, should all follow his instructions. Taking these officers with him, he proceeded to invade your dwelling-houses; and you, Timocrates, were the only one of his colleagues, though there were ten of them, who went with him. And let no one suppose that I am hinting that payment ought not to be exacted from defaulters. It ought; but how? As the law directs, and disinterestedly; that is the democratic way. Men of Athens, you got far less benefit from the five talents that this man collected, than injury from the practices that he introduced into your government.
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For if you care to inquire why a man would rather live under democracy than under oligarchy, you will find that the most obvious reason is that under democracy things are done more considerately. I will not insist that the conduct of these men was more outrageous and intolerable than under any oligarchy, no matter where. But take our own city: at what time was the greatest severity practised here? I am sure you will all reply, in the days of the Thirty Tyrants.
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And yet, even at that time, as we are told, no man who had concealed himself in his own house was deprived of his security; indeed, the particular charge brought against the Thirty is that they wrongfully carried men to jail from the market-place. But these men carried their atrocity to far greater lengths than that, insomuch that, under democratic government, they made every man’s house his prison, bringing the police into our very homes.
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What do you think of this, men of Athens? A poor man, or, for the matter of that, a rich man, who had spent a great deal and was, perhaps, in a certain sense short of money, was not only afraid to show himself in the market-place, but found it unsafe even to stay at home. And to think that Androtion was responsible for those fears,—Androtion, whose past life and conduct disqualify him for seeking satisfaction at law even for himself, much more for imposing Property-taxes for the State.
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If anyone asked him,—or asked you, Timocrates, the apologist and abettor of that gang,—whether our property or our persons are amenable to taxation, you would reply, if you chose to tell the truth, our property, because it is from our property that we pay. Then why, you unparalleled scoundrels, instead of confiscating estates and houses, and putting them on the schedule, did you imprison and maltreat men who were full citizens, as well as those unhappy aliens, whom you treated more outrageously than your own domestic slaves?
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If, gentlemen of the jury, you will turn over in your minds the question what is the difference between being a slave and being a free man, you will find that the biggest difference is that the body of a slave is made responsible for all his misdeeds, whereas corporal punishment is the last penalty to inflict on a free man. These men reversed that principle, and applied punishment to the bodies of their victims, as though they were bondservants.
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Androtion’s behavior towards you was so unfair and so greedy that, whilst approving the conduct of his own father, who had been confined in jail for a debt to the State and made his escape without payment or trial, he thought it quite proper that any other citizen, who was unable to pay out of his own resources, should be dragged by him from his home to the jail and there imprisoned.
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And Timocrates, at the time when he was levying double payment, would never have consented to accept bail, I do not say till the ninth presidency, but even for a single day, from any of us common people; we must either pay down the money or incontinently be lodged in prison. He used to hand over to the police even a man who had never been condemned in any court. Yet today he has dared, taking full responsibility, to introduce a law to enable persons on whom you have passed sentence, to go where they will in freedom.
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Nevertheless they will allege that both then and now they were acting in your interests. Will you then accept their exploits as due to zeal in your interests? Or will you indulgently tolerate the handiwork of their audacity and wickedness? No, men of Athens; you ought to abhor such men rather than liberate them. He who claims your indulgence as having acted for the good of the commonwealth must be shown to possess the spirit of the common wealth.
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That spirit is a spirit of compassion for the helpless, and of resistance to the intimidation of the strong and powerful; it does not inspire brutal treatment of the populace, and subservience to the potentates of the day.—And such is your conduct, Timocrates; and therefore the jury will have better reason to refuse you a hearing and condemn you to death than to acquit you for the sake of Androtion.
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However, I will make it quite clear to you without more ado that they did not carry out those exactions for your benefit. If they were asked whether, in their opinion, the greater injury is done to the commonwealth by tillers of the soil, who live frugally, but, because of the cost of maintaining their children, or of household expenses, or of other public burdens, are behindhand with their taxes, or by people who plunder and squander the money of willing taxpayers and the revenue that comes from our allies, I am sure that, for all their hardihood, they would never have the audacity to reply that those who fail to contribute their own money are worse transgressors than those who embezzle public money.
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—What then is the reason, Timocrates and Androtion, that, though one of you has taken part in public life for more than thirty years, though during that time many commanders have defrauded the commonwealth, and many politicians as well, who have been tried in this court, and though some of them have suffered death for their crimes, and others have condemned themselves by slipping away and disappearing altogether, neither of you ever once appeared as prosecutor of those offenders, or expressed any indignation at the wrongs of the city, but made your first exhibition of anxiety for our welfare in an affair which involved harsh treatment of a great many people?
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—Do you wish me to tell you the reason, men of Athens? These men share in the frauds that certain persons practise on you, and they also get their pickings from the collection of revenue. In their insatiable greed they reap a double harvest from the State. For it is not an easier matter to make enemies of a multitude of petty offenders than of a few big offenders; neither of course is it a more popular thing to have an eye for the sins of the many than for the sins of the few.
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However, the reason is what I am telling you. You must, therefore, take these facts into account, and, bearing in mind their several misdeeds, punish every one of them as soon as you have caught him. Never mind how long ago the offence was committed; consider only whether they committed it. If you are indulgent today to crimes that aroused your indignation then, it will look as though you sentenced them to repay the money because you were angry, not because you suffered any wrong. For to do something spiteful on the spur of the moment to the man who has hurt you is a symptom of anger; if you are really aggrieved, you wait till you have the malefactor at your mercy, and then punish him. You must not let it be inferred from your placability today that you disregarded your oaths and gratified an unjust passion then. You ought to detest them; you ought to be impatient of the sound of the voice of either of those two men, whose public conduct has been what I describe.
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Yes, but, in spite of those public delinquencies, there was, it may be said, other business which they managed with credit. On the contrary, in every respect their behavior towards their fellow-citizens has been such that the story you have heard is the least of the reasons you have for hating them. What do you wish me to mention? How they repaired the processional ornaments? How they broke up the crowns? Their success as manufacturers of saucers?
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Why, for those performances alone, though they had committed no other fraud on the City, it seems to me that they deserve not one but three sentences of death; for they are guilty of sacrilege, of impiety, of embezzlement, of every monstrous crime. The greater part, then, of the speech by which Androtion threw dust in your eyes I will leave unnoticed; but, by alleging that the leaves of the crowns were rotten with age and falling off,—as though they were violet-leaves or rose-leaves, not leaves made of gold—he persuaded you to melt them down. Being appointed to perform that operation, he chose as his assistant Timocrates, the constant partner of his misdeeds.
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And then, in providing for the collection of taxes, he had put in a clause that the public accountant should attend. That was very honest of him; only every taxpayer was certain to check the accounts. But in dealing with the crowns that he was to break up, he left out that very proper regulation; he was himself orator, goldsmith, business-manager, and auditor of accounts.
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—Now if you, sir, had claimed our entire confidence in all your public business, your dishonesty would not have been equally manifest; but, seeing that in the matter of the taxes you laid down the just principle that the City must trust, not you, but her own servants, and then, when you took up another job, and were tampering with the consecrated plate, some of it dedicated before we were born, you forgot to provide the precaution that was taken at your own instance in respect of the tax-collection, is it not perfectly clear what you were aiming at? Of course it is.
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Again, men of Athens, consider those glorious and much-admired inscriptions that he has obliterated for all time, and the strange and blasphemous inscriptions that he has written in their stead. You all, I suppose, used to see the words written under the circlets of the crowns: The Allies crowned the People for valor and righteousness, or The Allies dedicated to the Goddess of Athens a prize of victory; or, from the several states of the Alliance, Such-and-such a city crowned the People by whom they were delivered, or The liberated Euboeans, for example, crowned the People, or again Conon from the sea-fight with the Lacedaemonians, Chabrias from the sea-fight off Naxos.
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Such, I say, were the inscriptions on the crowns. They were tokens of emulation and honorable ambition; but now they have vanished with the destruction of the crowns, and the saucers which that lewd fellow has had made in their place bear the inscription Made by direction of Androtion. And so our temples contain gold plate marked with the name of a man whom the laws forbid to enter those temples in person because of his filthy life. Just like the old inscriptions,—Is it not?—and the same incentive to your ambitions!
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You may, then, mark three scandalous crimes committed by these persons. They have robbed the Goddess of her crowns. They have extinguished in the City that spirit of emulation that sprang from the achievements which the crowns, while in being, commemorated. They have deprived the donors of a great honor,—the credit of gratitude for benefits received. And after this long series of evil deeds they have grown so callous and so audacious that one of them expects you to acquit him for the sake of the other, and the other sits by his side and does not sink into the ground for shame at his conduct.
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Not only is he lost to shame when money is in question, but he is so dull-witted that he cannot see that crowns are a symbol of merit, but saucers and the like only of wealth; that every crown, however small, implies the same regard for honor as if it were large; that drinking-cups and censers and such possessions, if very numerous, attach to their owners a sort of reputation for wealth; but, if a man takes pride in trifles, instead of winning some honor by them, he is disdained as a man of vulgar tastes. This man, then, after destroying the possessions of honor, has made the possessions of wealth mean and unworthy of your dignity.
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There is another thing that he did not understand, that the Athenian democracy, never eager to acquire riches, coveted glory more than any other possession in the world. Here is the proof: once they possessed greater wealth than any other Hellenic people, but they spent it all for love of honor; they laid their private fortunes under contribution, and recoiled from no peril for glory’s sake. Hence the People inherits possessions that will never die; on the one hand the memory of their achievements, on the other, the beauty of the memorials set up in their honor,—yonder Gate-houses, the Parthenon, the porticoes, the docks—not a couple of jugs, or three or four bits of gold plate, weighing a pound apiece, which you, Timocrates, will propose to melt down again whenever the whim takes you.
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To dedicate those buildings they did not tithe themselves, nor fulfil the imprecations of their enemies by doubling the income-tax; nor was their policy ever guided by such advisers as you. No, they conquered their enemies, they fulfilled the prayers of every sound-hearted man by establishing concord throughout the city, and so they have bequeathed to us their imperishable glory,and excluded from the marketplace men whose habits of life were what yours have always been.
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But you, men of Athens, have grown so extremely good-natured and pliable, that, with those examples ever before you, you do not imitate them,—and Androtion is the repairer of your processional plate. Androtion! Gracious Heavens! Do you think impiety could go further than that? I hold that the man who is to enter the holy places, to lay hands on the vessels of lustration and the sacrificial baskets, and to become the director of divine worship, ought not to be pure for a prescribed number of days only his whole life should have been kept pure of the habits that have polluted the life of Androtion.
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Of Androtion I may speak at greater length hereafter. As for what he will say in support of Timocrates, I have still much more to say, but I will refrain. I am sure that he will not be able to deny that this law is undesirable, that it was introduced unconstitutionally, and that it is iniquitous in every respect; but I understand that he alleges that the money has now been paid in full by Androtion, Glaucetes, and Melanopus, and that he would be most infamously treated if, when the people on whose behalf he is accused of proposing his law have made full restitution, he should nevertheless be convicted.
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In my judgement, it is not open to him to make the slightest use of that plea.—If you, sir, admit that you did bring in your law on behalf of the persons who, as you say, have now done their duty, you must clearly be found guilty on this count,—that statutes still valid distinctly forbid you to introduce a law that does not apply equally to every citizen; and the jury have sworn to give judgement in accordance with those statutes.
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On the other hand, if you say that you legislated for the general good, you must not plead the payment made by these men,—it has nothing to do with your law,—you must prove that the law itself is acceptable and well conceived. That is the motive you allege; that is what I deny, and have therefore indicted you; that is the issue which the jury is to decide.—I should, indeed, have no difficulty in proving that respect for law is by no means the reason why these persons have paid their debt; but as that is not the question on which the jury have to vote, why trouble them by discussing it now?
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He will not, I suppose, spare you the argument that it would be very hard on him to be punished for proposing that no Athenian citizen shall be sent to jail; and that it is for the benefit more especially of people without influence that laws should be as merciful and humane as possible. To avoid being led astray, you will do well to listen to a brief rejoinder to that plea.
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For when he uses the phrase, that no Athenian citizen shall be sent to jail, do not forget that he is lying. That is not his proposal; it is that you jurors shall lose your control over penalties. He is trying to establish the right of appeal against a verdict returned on oath, after argument and trial. Do not let him pick out of his law and read a few phrases that have a benevolent sound to the ear let him produce the whole statute, clause by clause, and allow you to consider its effects. You will find that it is what I describe, not what he pretends.
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Again, with regard to the plea that merciful and humane laws are good for the common people, you must consider this. There are two sorts of problems, men of Athens, with which the laws of all nations are concerned. First, what are the principles under which we associate with one another, have dealings with one another, define the obligations of private life, and, in general, order our social relations? Secondly, what are the duties that every man among us owes to the commonwealth, if he chooses to take part in public life and professes any concern for the State?
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Now it is to the advantage of the common people that laws of the former category, laws of private intercourse, shall be distinguished by clemency and humanity. On the other hand it is to your common advantage that laws of the second class, the laws that govern our relations to the State, shall be trenchant and peremptory, because, if they are so, politicians will not do so much harm to the commonalty. Therefore, when he makes use of this plea, refute it by telling him that he is introducing clemency, not into the laws that benefit you, but into the laws that intimidate politicians.
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It would take a long speech to prove, point by point, that everything he will say will be intended to hoodwink and mislead you. Most of his topics I will pass over, but I will mention one leading point which you will bear in mind. Watch all his pleas, however various, and see if he will be able to advance one to prove his contention that a legislator may justly make the same ordinance for bygone issues, already determined, as for cases yet to come. Every clause of his law is infamous and outrageous; but that provision is the most outrageous and unconstitutional of all.
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But, if neither the defendant nor any other man can make good that contention, you must clearly recognize that you are being deluded, and you must ask yourselves how it ever occurred to his mind to legislate in this fashion.—You did not bring in your law gratuitously, Timocrates. No, indeed! far from it. You can offer no excuse for daring to introduce such a measure, except that cursed greediness of yours. Not one of these men is your kinsman, or a member of your household, or has any natural claim on you.
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Nor can you plead that you took compassion on ill-used men, and therefore resolved to help them. That long after date they should restore money belonging to the citizens, reluctantly, unwillingly, and after conviction in three courts of justice,—you certainly never thought that ill-usage. That means ill-conduct, and should rather provoke our indignation than incline us to pity. Nor do you take pity on them because a humane and considerate disposition is a peculiar trait of your character.
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Compassion for Androtion, Glaucetes, and Melanopus, because they have to repay stolen money, shows a temper quite different from your refusal of compassion to everyone of the many persons here present, and of all the other citizens, whose houses you invaded with police-magistrates, receivers, and clerks at your heels; with demolishing their front-doors, dragging their bed-clothes from under them, and levying distraint on a man’s maidservant, if he was living with her; and that is how you and Androtion were employed for a whole twelve-month.
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—Yes, it was you citizens who were the more infamously ill-used;—and as for you, you reprobate, you had far more reason to pity your fellow-citizens, who, thanks to you speech-makers, never get a moment’s respite from taxpaying. Even that is not enough they are compelled to pay double, compelled by you and Androtion, who never paid income-tax in your lives.
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—And yet this fellow was so self-confident,—as though he could never be brought to justice for his doings,—that, with ten colleagues in office, he alone joined Androtion in making his return. Yes indeed; gratuitously and from purely unselfish motives, Timocrates provokes your hostility, introducing laws that contradict every statute, and that even, to crown all, contradict a statute of his own making! By our Lady, I think that even you must recognize his generosity!
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I will now tell you, without any hesitation, something that, in my opinion, deserves your sternest indignation. Men of Athens, while he is doing all this for money, while he has, to tell the truth, deliberately adopted the profession of paid agent, he does not spend his earnings on purposes that might claim the indulgence of anyone who heard of them. What purposes do I mean? Well, gentlemen of the jury, the defendant’s father is in debt to the Treasury. I do not mention that by way of reproach, but because I cannot help it. And this dutiful son allows him to remain in debt!