Against Timarchus (121-125)

For your sakes pray let him give up such defence as that! But I myself will suggest to you, Timarchus, a different line of defence, which is honorable and fair, and you will adopt it, if you are conscious of having done nothing shameful. Come, dare to look the jury in the face and say that which a decent man ought to say of his youth: Fellow citizens, I have been brought up as boy and youth among you; how I have spent my time is no secret to you, and you see me with you in your assemblies.

Now if I were defending myself before any other set of men on the charge on which I stand accused, I think your testimony would readily suffice to refute the words of my accuser. For if any such act has been committed by me, nay rather if my life has exhibited to you even any resemblance to that of which he accuses me, I feel that the rest of my life is not worth living; I freely concede you my punishment, that the state may have therein a defence in the eyes of Hellas. I have not come here to beg for mercy from you; nay, do with me what you will, if you believe that I am such a man as that.

This, Timarchus, is the defence of a good and decent man, a man who has confidence in his past life, and who with good reason looks with contempt upon all efforts to slander him.

But the defence which Demosthenes persuades you to make is not for a free man, but for a prostitute—quibbling about when and where! But since you do take refuge in the names of the lodgings, demanding that in our proof we specify every single house where you plied your trade, to such an argument as that you will never again resort, if you are wise, when you have heard what I am about to say. For it is not the lodgings and the houses which give their names to the men who have lived in them, but it is the tenants who give to the places the names of their own pursuits.

Where, for example, several men hire one house and occupy it, dividing it between them, we call it an apartment house, but where one man only dwells, a house. And if perchance a physician moves into one of these shops on the street, it is called a surgery. But if he moves out and a smith moves into this same shop, it is called a smithy; if a fuller, a laundry; if a carpenter, a carpenter’ s shop; and if a pimp and his harlots, from the trade itself it gets its name of brothel. So that you have made many a house a brothel by the facility with which you have plied your profession. Ask not, then, where it was that you practised it, but make this your defence, that you have never done the thing.

But it seems that we are to have another argument, too, concocted by the same sophist. For he says that nothing is more unjust than common report, and he goes to the market-place for his evidence, the sort of thing that is quite in harmony with his own life. He says first[*] that the apartment house in Colonus which is called Demon’ s is falsely named, for it does not belong to Demon. Again, that the herm called the Herm of Andocides is not that of Andocides, but a votive offering of the tribe Aegeis.