Against Aristogiton (6-10)

Or ought you to spare the defendant on account of his ancestry and his moderation, or because he has done you many public and private services?[*] What information do you lack that makes you ask for arguments against the defendant here before you? What if we, the accusers, all ten of us, use up all the water in our clocks and proclaim that it is a terrible thing to release men who have been caught with bribes against the city in their very hands; will that make the council's report against Aristogiton true and just?

Or suppose that each of us assumes that you are just as well aware as we on which side justice lies in the present trials, and so leaves the platform after a short speech; will the report then be a false one, unjustly made by the Areopagites? Or don't you realize that to take bribes in order to betray the city's interests is one of the greatest crimes causing the most irreparable harm to cities?

No doubt I shall be told that the defendant is himself a man of sober character coming of a good family, that he has done you many noble services in private and in public life and that therefore you are justified in sparing him. You must all have often heard that, when Aristogiton's father Cydimachus was condemned to death and fled from the city, this admirable son allowed his own father to lack the bare necessities of life, while he survived, and do without a proper burial when he died: a fact for which evidence was often brought against him;

or again, that the man himself, on being taken to prison for the first time,—no doubt you realize that he has often been imprisoned—dared to behave in such a way there that the inmates voted that no one should either light a fire for him or sit at meals or share the usual sacrifices with him. Reflect, Athenians; what sort of character must we suppose this man to have, who was thrown into prison for criminal conduct

and when he was there, among those who had been segregated from the rest of the world as felons, was looked upon as so debased that even there he was not thought worthy of the same treatment as the rest? It is said, in fact, that he was caught thieving among them and that, if there had been any other place more degraded where they could have isolated men who stole in prison, this monster would have been conducted there. These facts, as I said just now, were established by evidence against Aristogiton, as is well known, when the lot fell to him to be custodian of the exchange but he was rejected by those who then decided the appointment to that office.[*]