Against Ctesiphon (36-40)

For they will offer a law that has nothing to do with this case, and will say that the city has two laws governing proclamations: one, the law that I now offer in evidence, which expressly forbids the man who is crowned by the people to be proclaimed outside the assembly; but they will say that there is another law, contradictory to this, and that that law has given authority for the proclamation of the crown at the time of the tragedies in the theater, if the people vote. And so they will say that it is in accordance with that law that Ctesiphon has made his motion.

Now against their tricks I will introduce your own laws as my advocates, as indeed I earnestly try to do throughout this whole prosecution. For if what they say is true, and such a custom has crept into your government that invalid laws stand written among the valid, and that there exist two laws concerning one and the same action, which contradict each other, how could any man longer call this a government, if in it the laws command to do and not to do one and the same thing?

But that is not the case. May you never reach the point where your laws are in such disorder as that! Nor was the lawgiver who established the democracy guilty of such neglect; he has expressly laid upon the Thesmothetae[*] the duty of making an annual revision of the laws in the presence of the people, prescribing sharp investigation and examination, in order to determine whether any law stands written which contradicts another law, or an invalid law stands among the valid, or whether more laws than one stand written to govern each action.

And if they find such a thing, they are required to write it out and post it on bulletins in front of the Eponymi;[*] and the prytanes are required to call a meeting of the assembly, writing at the head of the call, For Nomothetae;[*] and the chairman of the presiding officers must submit to vote[*] the question of the removal of one set of laws and the retention of the other, in order that for each action there may be one law and no more. Please read the laws.

Laws

If now, fellow citizens, what they assert were true, and two laws had been in force governing proclamations, I think the Thesmothetae would necessarily have searched them out, and the prytanes would have referred them to the Nomothetae, and one or the other of the two laws would have been repealed, either the law that gave authority for the proclamation, or the law that forbade it. But seeing that no such thing has been done, surely what they say is demonstrated to be, not only false, but absolutely impossible.