Further, it was not with the same, but with vastly different weapons that the accused withstood him, as the facts themselves show. The one used hands which were in the fullness of their strength, and with them he slew; whereas the other defended himself but feebly against a stronger man, and died without leaving any mark of that defense behind him. Moreover, if it was with his hands and not with steel that the defendant slew, then the fact that his hands are more a part of himself than is steel makes him so much the more a murderer.

He further dared to assert that he who struck the first blow, even though he did not slay, is more truly the murderer than he who killed; for it is to the aggressor’s wilful act that the death was due, he says. But I maintain the very opposite. If our hands carry out the intentions of each of us, he who struck without killing was the wilful author of the blow alone: the willfull author of the death was he who struck and killed: for it was as the result of an intentional act on the part of the defendant that the man was killed.

Again, while the victim suffered the ill-effect of the mischance, it is the striker who suffered the mischance itself; for the one met his death as the result of the other’s act, so that it was not through his own mistake, but through the mistake of the man who struck him, that he was killed; whereas the other did more than he meant to do, and he had only himself to blame for the mischance whereby he killed a man whom he did not mean to slay.A reply to the arguments of the defense in Antiph. 4.2.6. The terms ἀτυχία, ἁμαρτία, and συμφορά represent the logically distinguishable elements which constitute an unfortunate accident. Owing to ἀτυχία the agent commits an error (ἁμαρτία), i.e. performs an act which he either had no intention of performing at all or intended to perform differently, and the result is a συμφορά, which may fall either upon the agent himself or upon some second person. In the present paragraph it is assumed for the moment, as it had been assumed by the defense in Antiph. 4.2.6, that death was purely accidental. Blood-guilt will still rest upon one of the two parties: but it will rest on the party guilty of ἁμαρτία (cf. Antiph. 3, ). Now the defense had argued in Antiph. 4.2.6 that X, the aggressor, had been responsible for the ἁμαρτία; it had consisted in his taking the offensive: and he was ἀτυχής in doing so. The resultant συμφορά had fallen upon himself. The prosecution here replies that while the συμφορά indeed fell on X, the ἀτυχία and the ἁμαρτία lay with Y, because Y had given a harder blow than he intended.

I am surprised that, in alleging the man’s death to have been due to the physician,If the οὐχ of the manuscripts is retained, we have a flat contradiction of Antiph. 4.2.4, where the defense does in fact accuse the prosecution of having caused the man’s death. Further, the argument of the present paragraph becomes exceedingly elliptical. It will presumably run thus: The defendant accuses the physician; but he ought logically to accuse us instead. He would undoubtedly have accused us of having been responsible for the man’s death through neglect, had we not sought medical aid at all; so he should similarly accuse us of murder, if we sent the patient to a bad physician instead of a good one. If the οὐχ is deleted, we get consistency with Antiph. 4.2.4, and the argument is as in the text. οὐχ was probably inserted by a reader who thought that the first sentence of 5 was self-contradictory. Note that this first sentence (ὑπὸ δὲ . . . διαφθαρῆναι) does not imply merely that the defense have contradicted themselves by accusing first the physician and then the prosecution; this is clear from the καὶ γὰρ ἂν κτλ. which follows, giving the true reason for the speaker’s surprise. he should assign responsibility for it to us, upon whose advice it was that he received medical attention; for had we failed to place him under a physician, the defendant would assuredly have maintained that his death was due to neglect. But even if his death was due to the physician, which it was not, the physician is not his murderer, because the law absolves him from blame. On the other hand, as it was only owing to the blows given by the defendant that we placed the dead man under medical care at all, can the murderer be anyone save him who forced us to call in the physician?

Although it has been proved so clearly and so completely that he killed the dead man, his impudence and shamelessness are such that he is not content with defending his own act of wickedness: he actually accuses us, who are seeking expiation of the defilement which rests upon him, of acting like unscrupulous scoundrels.