Against Timarchus (16-20)

Law

[If any Athenian shall outrage a free-born child, the parent or guardian of the child shall demand a specific penalty. If the court condemn the accused to death, he shall be delivered to the constables and be put to death the same day. If he be condemned to pay a fine, and be unable to pay the fine immediately, he must pay within eleven days after the trial, and he shall remain in prison until payment is made. The same action shall hold against those who abuse the persons of slaves.]

Now perhaps some one, on first hearing this law, may wonder for what possible reason this word slaves was added in the law against outrage. But if you reflect on the matter, fellow citizens, you will find this to be the best provision of all. For it was not for the slaves that the lawgiver was concerned, but he wished to accustom you to keep a long distance away from the crime of outraging free men, and so he added the prohibition against the outraging even of slaves. In a word, he was convinced that in a democracy that man is unfit for citizenship who outrages any person whatsoever.

And I beg you, fellow citizens, to remember this also, that here the lawgiver is not yet addressing the person of the boy himself, but those who are near him, father, brother, guardian, teachers, and in general those who have control of him. But, as soon as the young man has been registered in the list of citizens, and knows the laws of the state, and is now able to distinguish between right and wrong, the lawgiver no longer addresses another, Timarchus, but now the man himself.

And what does he say? If any Athenian, he says, shall have prostituted his person, he shall not be permitted to become one of the nine archons, because, no doubt, that official wears the wreath;[*]nor to discharge the office of priest, as being not even clean of body; nor shall he act as an advocate for the state, he says, nor shall ever hold any office whatsoever, at home or abroad,whether filled by lot or by election; nor shall he be a herald or an ambassador

—nor shall he prosecute men who have served as ambassadors, nor shall he be a hired slanderer— nor ever address senate or assembly, not even though he be the most eloquent orator in Athens. And if any one contrary to these prohibitions, the lawgiver has provided for criminal process on the charge of prostitution, and has prescribed the heaviest penalties therefor. Read to the jury this law also, that you may know, gentlemen, in the face of what established laws of yours, so good and so moral, Timarchus has had the effrontery to speak before the people—a man whose character is so notorious.