Against Timocrates (204-206)

I am sure that you would all agree, if asked, that all evil-doers ought to be punished; but I will try to satisfy you that this malefactor in particular deserves punishment for introducing a law detrimental to the common people. A thief, or a cutpurse, or any rogue of that sort, in the first place really injures only the man who encounters him; it is out of his power to strip everybody, or steal everybody’s property; and in the second place, he brings disgrace on no one’s reputation or manner of life but his own.

But if a man introduces a law by which unlimited license and immunity is granted to those who seek to defraud their fellow-citizens, he is guilty in respect of the whole city, and he brings disgrace upon everybody; for an infamous statute, when ratified, is a discredit to the government that enacted it and an injury to everyone who lives under it. Will you not, then, punish, when you have caught him, a man who is doing his utmost to injure you, and to pollute you with infamy? If not, what excuse will you have?

The best way to ascertain with what far-reaching designs he has framed his law, and how inimical those designs are to the established constitution, is to reflect that this is just the way that all conspirators begin, when they are trying to overthrow democracy by innovations,—they first of all release all who were formerly by law suffering this penalty for some offence.