Against Ctesiphon (41-45)

But I will show you where they get this false assertion. First, however, I will tell the reason why the laws governing the proclamations in the theater were enacted. It frequently happened that at the performance of the tragedies in the city proclamations were made without authorization of the people, now that this or that man was crowned by his tribe, now that others were crowned by the men of their deme, while other men by the voice of the herald manumitted their household slaves, and made all Hellas their witness;

and, most invidious of all, certain men who had secured positions as agents of foreign states managed to have proclaimed that they were crowned—it might be by the people of Rhodes, or of Chios, or of some other state—in recognition of their merit and uprightness. And this they did, not like those who were crowned by your senate or by the people, by first obtaining your consent and by your decree, and after establishing large claims upon your gratitude, but themselves reaching out after the honor with no authorization from you.

The result of this practice was that the spectators, the choregi, and the actors alike were discommoded, and that those who were crowned in the theater received greater honors than those whom the people crowned. For the latter had a place prescribed where they must receive their crown, the assembly of the people, and proclamation anywhere else was forbidden; but the others were proclaimed in the presence of all the Hellenes; the one class with your consent, by your decree; the other, without decree.

Now some legislator, seeing this, caused a law to be enacted which has nothing to do with the law concerning those who are crowned by our people, and did not supersede it. For it was not the assembly that was being disturbed, but the theater; and he was not enacting a law contradictory to the previously existing laws, for that may not be done; but a law governing those who, without your decree, are crowned by their tribe or deme, and governing the freeing of slaves, and also the foreign crowns. He expressly forbids the manumission of a slave in the theater, or the proclamation of a crown by the tribe or deme, or by any one else, he says, and the herald who disobeys shall lose his civic rights.

When, therefore, the lawgiver designates, for those who are crowned by the senate, the senate-house as the place of proclamation, and, for those who are crowned by the people, the assembly, and when he forbids those who are crowned by the demes or tribes to be proclaimed at the tragedies—that no one may try to get spurious honor by begging crowns and proclamations, and when in the law he further forbids proclamation being made by any one else, senate, people, tribe, and deme being thus eliminated—when one takes these away, what is it that is left except the foreign crowns?