Against Aristogeiton I (66-70)

then he must clearly be ill-disposed to those who have destroyed them and to their laws and their constitution. But if he has no regard for these things, I should like to know who that sees how he has renounced all affection for his parents, can believe in his pretended zeal for the people; for the man who neglects his parents I regard as unworthy of trust and hateful alike to gods and men.

But I shall be told it is because you condemned him on information laid and twice put him and his brother into prison; it is for this reason that he is your well-wisher. But that too is ridiculous. Or because you disqualified him for the office to which he had been allotted? Or because you found him guilty of a breach of the constitution? Or because you fined him ten talents? Or because you habitually point the finger of scorn at him as the vilest of all men in the world?

Or because, as long as the present laws and constitution stand, he cannot clear himself of these reproaches? Then why is he well-disposed to you? It is because, in his own words, he is impudent. Why is the impudent man so called save because, being lost to a sense of shame, he dares to state what is not, and never will be, true? And that is precisely what the defendant does.

Now there are some facts about the information laid against him which Lycurgus seems to have passed over, but which I had better lay before you; for I think you should examine the defendant and the rights of the present case as carefully as you would scrutinize a private debt. Suppose then that A accused B of owing him money, and B denied it. If the registered terms of the loan were still to be read, or if the pillars which marked the mortgaged property were still standing, you would clearly regard as impudent the man who denied the transaction; but if it was shown that these proofs no longer existed, then you would regard the accuser as impudent. That is natural.

Well, of Aristogeiton’s debt to the State the terms still exist, namely the laws under which all defaulters are registered; and the pillar is the wooden table of the law deposited in the temple of the Goddess. Now if these have been destroyed and the debt wiped out, we are talking nonsense, or rather telling lies; but if they are still in existence and will remain valid until he pays his debt, then there is no truth in his plea, but he is committing a serious crime in trying to suppress the rights of the State.