Against Timocrates (181-185)

Such, I say, were the inscriptions on the crowns. They were tokens of emulation and honorable ambition; but now they have vanished with the destruction of the crowns, and the saucers which that lewd fellow has had made in their place bear the inscription Made by direction of Androtion. And so our temples contain gold plate marked with the name of a man whom the laws forbid to enter those temples in person because of his filthy life. Just like the old inscriptions,—Is it not?—and the same incentive to your ambitions!

You may, then, mark three scandalous crimes committed by these persons. They have robbed the Goddess of her crowns. They have extinguished in the City that spirit of emulation that sprang from the achievements which the crowns, while in being, commemorated. They have deprived the donors of a great honor,—the credit of gratitude for benefits received. And after this long series of evil deeds they have grown so callous and so audacious that one of them expects you to acquit him for the sake of the other, and the other sits by his side and does not sink into the ground for shame at his conduct.

Not only is he lost to shame when money is in question, but he is so dull-witted that he cannot see that crowns are a symbol of merit, but saucers and the like only of wealth; that every crown, however small, implies the same regard for honor as if it were large; that drinking-cups and censers and such possessions, if very numerous, attach to their owners a sort of reputation for wealth; but, if a man takes pride in trifles, instead of winning some honor by them, he is disdained as a man of vulgar tastes. This man, then, after destroying the possessions of honor, has made the possessions of wealth mean and unworthy of your dignity.

There is another thing that he did not understand, that the Athenian democracy, never eager to acquire riches, coveted glory more than any other possession in the world. Here is the proof: once they possessed greater wealth than any other Hellenic people, but they spent it all for love of honor; they laid their private fortunes under contribution, and recoiled from no peril for glory’s sake. Hence the People inherits possessions that will never die; on the one hand the memory of their achievements, on the other, the beauty of the memorials set up in their honor,—yonder Gate-houses, the Parthenon, the porticoes, the docks—not a couple of jugs, or three or four bits of gold plate, weighing a pound apiece, which you, Timocrates, will propose to melt down again whenever the whim takes you.

To dedicate those buildings they did not tithe themselves, nor fulfil the imprecations of their enemies by doubling the income-tax; nor was their policy ever guided by such advisers as you. No, they conquered their enemies, they fulfilled the prayers of every sound-hearted man by establishing concord throughout the city, and so they have bequeathed to us their imperishable glory,and excluded from the marketplace men whose habits of life were what yours have always been.