Against Aristocrates (41-45)

Accordingly the law excludes the murderer from all these places; but if anyone puts him to death elsewhere, outside the places specified, the same retribution is provided as when an Athenian is slain. He did not describe the fugitive by the name of the city, for in that name he has no part, but by that of the act for which he is chargeable. Accordingly he says: if any man kill the murderer; and afterwards, when he prescribed the places from which the man is debarred, he introduces the name of the City for the lawful assignment of punishment: he shall be liable to the same penalty as if he killed an Athenian. Gentlemen, that phrase is very different from the wording of the decree before us.

Yet is it not scandalous to propose the surrender of men whom the law has permitted to go into exile and to live in security, provided they absent themselves from the places I have mentioned, and to rob them of that benefit of mercy which the unfortunate may justly claim from those who are unconcerned in their crimes, although, in our ignorance of the future destiny of every man, it is uncertain for which of us that benefit is in store? In this case, if the man who slays Charidemus (supposing the thing really to happen) is slain in his turn by men who capture him as an outcast, after he has gone into exile, and while he absents himself from the places specified in the law, they will be liable to a charge of bloodguiltiness,—and so will you, sir.

For it is written: if any man shall cause to be killed, and you will have caused, because it is you who have granted the licence implied in your decree. Therefore if, when the event has happened, we let you and your friends go free, we shall be living in the society of the unholy, and on the other hand, if we prosecute, we shall be constrained to act in opposition to our own resolution.—Gentlemen, is it a trifling or a casual reason that you have for annulling this decree?

Read the next statute.

Statute

If any man outside the frontier pursue or violently seize the person of any homicide who has quitted the country, and whose goods are not confiscate, he shall incur the same penalty as if he so acted within our own territory.

Here is another law, men of Athens, humanely and excellently enacted; and this law the defendant shall in like manner be proved to have transgressed.

If any man, it begins, and then, any homicide who has quitted the country and whose goods are not confiscate, meaning any man who has migrated by reason of involuntary manslaughter. That is quite clear, because it speaks of those who have quitted the country, not of those who have gone into exile, and because it specifies persons whose goods are not confiscate, for the property of willful murderers is forfeited to the State. The legislator, I say, is speaking of involuntary offenders. To what purport?