On the Choreutes (6-10)

The laws, the oaths, the sacrifices, the proclamations, in fact the whole of the proceedings in connection with trials for murder differ as profoundly as they do from the proceedings elsewhere simply because it is of supreme importance that the facts at issue, upon which so much turns, should themselves be rightly interpreted. Such a right interpretation means vengeance for him who has been wronged; whereas to find an innocent man guilty of murder is a mistake, and a sinful mistake, which offends both gods and laws. Nor is it as serious for the prosecutor to accuse the wrong person as it is for you judges to reach a wrong verdict. The charge brought by the prosecutor is not in itself effective; whether it becomes so, depends upon you, sitting in judgement. On the other hand, if you yourselves arrive at a wrong verdict, you cannot rid yourselves of the responsibility for so doing by blaming someone else for that verdict.

My own attitude to my defence, gentlemen, is very different from that of my accusers to their prosecution. They, on their side, allege that their object in bringing this action is to discharge a sacred duty and to satisfy justice; whereas they have in fact treated their speech for the prosecution as nothing but an opportunity for malicious falsehood, and such behavior is the worst travesty of justice humanly possible. Their aim is not to expose any crime I may have committed in order to exact the penalty which it deserves, but to blacken me, even though I am entirely innocent, in order to have me punished with exile from this country.

I, on the other hand, consider that my first duty is to reply to the charge before the court by giving you a complete account of the facts. Afterwards, if you so desire, I shall be pleased to answer the remaining accusations made,[*] as they will, I feel, turn to my own credit and advantage, and to the discomfiture of my opponents to whose impudence they are due. For it is indeed a strange fact, gentlemen:

when they had the opportunity of avenging themselves on an enemy and doing the state a service by exposing and bringing home to me any public offence of which I had been guilty, as Choregus or otherwise, not one of them was able to prove that I had done your people any wrong, great or small.[*] Yet at today’s trial, when they are prosecuting for prosecution to the charge before the court,[*] they are seeking to achieve my downfall with a tissue of lies calculated to bring my public life into disrepute. If the state has in fact been wronged, they are compensating it not with redress, but with a mere accusation; while they are themselves demanding that reparation for a wrong which has been suffered by the state should be made to them in person.

Indeed, they deserve to win neither gratitude nor credence with these charges of theirs. The circumstances in which they are prosecuting are not such as to allow the state to obtain satisfaction if really wronged, and only so would they be entitled to its gratitude; while the prosecutor who refuses to confine himself to the charge before the court in an action such as the present does not so much deserve to be believed as to be disbelieved. I myself know well enough what your own feelings are; nothing save the facts immediately at issue would lead you either to condemn or to acquit, because only thus can the claims of heaven and of justice be satisfied. So with those facts I will begin.