Epichares Against Theocrines, a Criminal Information (21-25)

(To the clerk.) Read, please, the law which declares that anyone who is adjudged to have wrongfully asserted the freedom of a slave shall pay half the sum assessed into the public treasury, and then read also the deposition of Cephisodorus.

The Law. The Deposition

Now read that law also, which declares that a man shall be regarded as a debtor from the day on which he incurs the fine, whether he has been entered on the public register or not.

The Law

In what other way, men of the jury, could an honest prosecutor show that the criminal information has been rightly brought against this Theocrines, and that he is liable, not only to the fine of a thousand drachmae, which forms the basis of the information, but to many other penalties as well? To my mind there is no other way. For surely you cannot expect that Theocrines will himself admit the indebtedness to your treasury and say that the criminal information has been lodged against him with justice. On the contrary, he will say anything rather than this. He will bring forward all manner of charges, alleging that a cabal is working against him, and that he has come into this danger because of the indictments which he has preferred for illegal actions.

For this is the last resource of those convicted on the facts of the case—to invent charges and excuses which will make you forget the question before you and give attention to arguments which are alien to the accusation. But I, men of the jury, if I had seen in the laws which have just been read a clause to this effect: these provisions regarding those who bring malicious charges shall be in force unless Theocrines, a criminal information having been laid against him, shall see fit to denounce Thucydides[*] or Demosthenes or any other of the men in public life, I should have kept quiet; but as it is, I find that no such excuse is taken into consideration in the laws, nor is it new, so that those now hearing it for the first time should pay attention to it; on the contrary it has been used ten thousand times by people on trial.

I am also told, men of the jury, by those who are older than I, that it is proper that in no case whatever should pardon be shown to one who transgresses the laws, but if pardon is to be shown, it should not be to those who are habitual offenders or to those who betray the laws for a bribe (surely not that!) but to those who through their own inexperience unintentionally transgress some provision of the law. No man, I take it, would say that Theocrines here belongs to this latter class, but on the contrary that there is no provision of the law with which he is not acquainted.

You must, therefore, watch him, and have regard neither to my words nor to those which will be spoken by his side. For it is not right that those who sit here to defend the laws should pay attention to long speeches and accusations, but only to those which you will all easily follow, and by the help of which you will be thought by all the citizens to have decided this information in a manner worthy of the laws. You should ask in plain terms, What do you mean, Theocrines, and all you who follow the same pursuits as he does? Do you demand that we who have sworn that we will give our verdict according to the laws shall vote contrary to the laws because of your speeches?