Against Timocrates (126-130)

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!

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,[*] 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 Egypt; 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[*] 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.

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;

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.

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.