Against Leptines (91-95)

For in those days, indeed, while they legislated in that way, they kept to the existing laws and were not always proposing new ones; but ever since certain statesmen rose to power and, as I am informed, contrived to get into their own hands the right to initiate legislation at any time and in any way they wished, there are so many contradictory statutes that for a long time you have had to appoint a commission to sort out the contradictory ones;

yet in spite of this the business never comes to an end. Our laws are no better than so many decrees; nay, you will find that the laws which have to be observed in drafting the decrees are later[*] than the decrees themselves. Not to be content, then, with a bare assertion, but to show you the actual law to which I refer, please take and read the law constituting the original legislative commission.

[The law is read]

You understand, Athenians, the beauty of Solon’s directions for legislating. The first stage is in your courts, before men under oath, where all other ratifications are made; the next is the repeal of the contradictory laws, so that there may be only one law dealing with each subject, and that the plain citizen may not be puzzled by such contradictions and be at a disadvantage compared with those who are acquainted with the whole body of law, but that all may have the same ordinances before them, simple and clear to read and understand.

Moreover, before these proceedings, Solon ordered that the laws should be exposed before the statues of the eponymous heroes[*] and handed in to the town-clerk to recite them at the meetings of the Assembly, so that each of you may hear them more than once and digest them at leisure, and if they are just and expedient, may add them to the statute-book. Now, numerous as those enactments are, Leptines yonder has observed not one of them, for, if he had, I do not think that you would ever have consented to pass his law. We on the other hand, Athenians, have observed them all, and we are submitting a much better and more equitable law than his. You will realize that when you hear it.

Take and read first of all the clauses of his law which we have indicted, and next the clauses we propose to substitute for them. Read.[*]

[The law is read]

These are the parts of the law of Leptines which we arraign as unsatisfactory. Next in order read our proposed amendments. Pray attend, gentlemen of the jury, to these as they are recited. Read.

[The law is read]