I wish now, men of Athens, to bring before you the testimony also of the Athenian civic body, to show you how great care they take in regard to these religious rites. For the civic body of Athens, although it has supreme authority over all things in the state, and it is in its power to do whatsoever it pleases, yet regarded the gift of Athenian citizenship as so honorable and so sacred a thing that it enacted in its own restraint laws to which it must conform, when it wishes to create a citizen—laws which now have been dragged through the mire by Stephanus and those who contract marriages of this sort.