Prosecution Of The Stepmother For Poisoning (1-5)

Not only am I still too young to know anything of courts of law, gentlemen; but I am also faced with a terrible dilemma. On the one hand, how can I disregard my father’s solemn injunction to bring his murderers to justice? On the other hand, if I obey it, I shall inevitably find myself ranged against the last persons with whom I should quarrel, my half-brothers and their mother.

Circumstances for which the defence have only themselves to blame have made it necessary that my charge should be directed against them, and them alone. One would have expected them to seek vengeance for the dead and support the prosecution; but as it is, the opposite is the case; they are themselves my opponents and the murderers, as both I and my indictment[*] state.

Gentlemen, I have one request. If I prove that my opponents’ mother murdered our father by malice aforethought, after being caught not merely once, but repeatedly, in the act of seeking his life,[*] then first avenge the outrage against your laws, that heritage from the gods and your forefathers which enables you to sentence the guilty even as they did; and secondly avenge the dead man, and in so doing give me, a lonely orphan, your aid.

For you are my kin; those who should have avenged the dead and supported me are his murderers and my opponents. So where is help to be sought, where is a refuge to be found, save with you and with justice?

I am at a loss indeed to understand the feelings which have led my brother to range himself against me. Does he imagine that his duty as a son consists simply in loyalty to his mother? To my mind, it is a far greater sin to neglect the avenging of the dead man; and the more so since he met his doom as the involuntary victim of a plot, whereas she sent him to it by deliberately forming that plot.