Against Aristogeiton I (51-55)

Just consider. There are something like twenty thousand citizens in all. Every single one of them frequents the market-place on some business (you may be sure), either public or private. Not so the defendant. He cannot point to any decent or honorable business in which he has spent his life; he does not use his talents in the service of the State; he is not engaged in a profession or in agriculture or in any other business; he takes no part in any charitable or social organization:

but he makes his way through the market-place like a snake or a scorpion with sting erect, darting hither and thither, on the look-out for someone on whom he can call down disaster or calumny or mischief of some sort, or whom he can terrify till he extorts money from him. He never calls at the barber’s or the perfumer’s or any other shop in the city. He is implacable, restless, unsociable; he has no charity, no friendliness, none of the feelings of a decent human being; he is attended by those companions whom painters couple with the damned souls in hell—by Malediction, Evil-speaking, Envy, Faction, Dissension.

This man, then, who is likely to find no mercy from the powers below, but to be thrust out among the impious for the depravity of his life—this man, when you have caught him doing wrong, will you not only decline to punish, but actually dismiss him with greater rewards than you would bestow on your benefactors? For what defaulter to the treasury have you ever allowed to enjoy full rights, unless he paid his debt? Not one! Then do not grant this favour to the defendant now, but punish him and make him a warning to the others.

The sequel too, men of Athens, is worth hearing. What you have just heard from Lycurgus is serious, or, rather, impossible to exaggerate, but the rest will be found to rival it and to be of the same character. Not content with abandoning his father in prison when he quitted Eretria, as you have heard from Phaedrus, this unnatural ruffian refused to bury him when he died, and would not refund the expenses to those who did bury him, but actually brought a law-suit against them.

Not content with offering violence to his mother, as you have just heard from witnesses, he actually sold his own sister—not indeed a sister by the same father, but his mother’s daughter, whatever her parentage (for I pass that by)—yes, sold his sister for export, as is stated in the indictment of the action which was brought against him on these grounds by his good brother here, who in the present action will help to defend him.