Theomnestus and Apollodorus Against Neaera (106-110)

And he does not suffer anyone to become an Athenian in the later period, unless he be made such at the time and be approved by the court, for fear that numbers of people, by claiming to be Plataeans, might acquire for themselves the right of citizenship. And furthermore, he defined at once in the decree the rule applying to the Plataeans in the interest of the city and of the gods, declaring that it should not be permitted to any of them to be drawn by lot for the office of the nine archons or for any priesthood, but that their descendants might be so drawn, if they were born from mothers who were of Attic birth and were betrothed according to the law.

Is not this a monstrous thing? In the case of those who were neighbors and who had shown themselves of all the Greeks by common consent to have conferred the greatest benefits upon your state, you thus carefully and accurately defined regarding each one the terms on which they should receive the gift of citizenship; are you then thus shamefully and recklessly to let off unpunished a woman who has openly played the harlot throughout the whole of Greece, who treats the city with outrage and the gods with impiety, and who is a citizen neither by birth nor by the gift of the people?

Where has this woman not prostituted herself? To what place has she not gone in quest of her daily wage? Has she not been everywhere in the Peloponnesus, in Thessaly and in Magnesia[*] in the company of Simus of Larisa[*] and Eurydamas son of Medeius, in Chios[*] and most of Ionia, following in the train of Sotadas the Cretan, and was she not let out for hire by Nicaretê so long as she belonged to her? What do you suppose a woman does who is subject to men who are not her kinsfolk, and who follows in the train of him who pays her? Does she not serve all the lusts of those who deal with her? Will you, then, declare by your vote that a woman of this stamp, who is known by everybody beyond all question to have plied her trade the whole world over, is an Athenian citizen?

What honorable deed will you say that you have done, when people ask you, or with what shame and impiety will you yourselves say that you are not chargeable? For up to the time when this woman was indicted and brought to trial, so that you all learned who she was and what acts of impiety she had committed, the crimes were her own, and the state was merely guilty of neglect; and some of you knew nothing of the matter, and others learning of it expressed their indignation in words but in fact had no means of dealing with her, seeing that nobody brought her to trial or gave an opportunity of casting a vote regarding her. But now that you all know the facts and have got her in your own hands, and have the power to punish her, the sin against the gods becomes your own, if you fail to do so.

And when each one of you goes home, what will he find to say to his own wife or his daughter or his mother, if he has acquitted this woman?—when the question is asked you, Where were you? and you answer, We sat as jury. Trying whom? it will at once be asked, Neaera, you will say, of course, will you not? because she, an alien woman, is living as wife with an Athenian contrary to law, and because she gave her daughter, who had lived as a harlot, in marriage to Theogenes, the king, and this daughter performed on the city’s behalf the rites that none may name, and was given as wife to Dionysus. And you will narrate all the other details of the charge, showing how well and accurately and in a manner not easily forgotten the accusation covered each point.