Against Leptines (156-157)

But Leptines has used a different measure and says that if anyone claims a return from you, he shall be disfranchised, and his property shall be confiscated. There you have two penalties. The process shall be by laying information or by summary arrest; and if he be convicted, he shall be liable under the law which provides for the case of a man holding office while in debt to the treasury. Death is what he means, for such is the punishment in that case. Why, here are three penalties![*] Is it not monstrously hard, Athenians, if it proves more serious in your courts to ask for a return for good service than to be convicted of some heinous crime?

Men of Athens, this law, so dishonorable, so unsound, so suggestive of envy and spite and—I spare you the rest. Those are the sort of things that the framer of the law seems to favor, but you must not imitate them nor display sentiments unworthy of yourselves. I ask you in Heaven’s name, what should we all most earnestly deprecate? What do all our laws most carefully guard against? What but those vengeful murders against which our specially appointed protector is the Council of the Areopagus?