On the Embassy (271-275)

You hear, men of Athens, the record which declares Arthmius, son of Pythonax, of Zelea, to be enemy and foeman of the Athenian people and their allies, him and all his kindred. His offence was conveying gold from barbarians to Greeks. Hence, apparently, we may conclude that your ancestors were anxious to prevent any man, even an alien, taking rewards to do injury to Greece; but you take no thought to discountenance wrongs done by your own citizens to your own city.

Does anyone say that this inscription has been set up just anywhere? No; although the whole of our citadel is a holy place, and although its area is so large, the inscription stands at the right hand beside the great brazen Athene which was dedicated by the state as a memorial of victory in the Persian war, at the expense of the Greeks. In those days, therefore, justice was so venerable, and the punishment of these crimes so meritorious, that the retribution of such offenders was honored with the same position as Pallas Athene’s own prize of victory. Today we have instead—mockery, impunity, dishonor, unless you restrain the licence of these men.

In my judgement, men of Athens, you will do well, not to emulate your forefathers in some one respect alone, but to follow their conduct step by step. I am sure you have all heard the story of their treatment of Callias, son of Hipponicus, who negotiated the celebrated peace[*] under which the King of Persia was not to approach within a day’s ride of the coast, nor sail with a ship of war between the Chelidonian islands and the Blue Rocks. At the inquiry into his conduct they came near to putting him to death, and mulcted him in fifty talents, because he was said to have taken bribes on embassy.

Yet no one can cite a more honorable peace made by the city before or since; but that is not what they regarded. They attributed the honorable peace to their own valor and to the high repute of their city, the refusal or acceptance of money to the character of the ambassador; and they expected an honest and incorruptible character in any man who entered the service of the state.

They held the taking of bribes to be too inimical and unprofitable to the state to be tolerated in any transaction or in any person; but you, men of Athens, having before you a peace which at once has pulled down the walls of your allies and is building up the houses of your ambassadors, which robbed the city of her possessions and earned for them wealth beyond the dreams of avarice, instead of putting them to death of your own accord, wait for the appearance of a prosecutor. You are giving them a trial of words with their evil deeds before your eyes.