Against Philocles (16-20)

Will you, the guardians of democracy and law, spare a man who has behaved like this; you to whom the fortune of lot has entrusted the protection[*] of the people by means of the judgement you will give? You are the supreme court of justice in the city. Will you acquit a man guilty of taking bribes and every other crime, who, as I said just now, is unique among criminals in that he has been reported not once merely but three times and might already have been rightly made liable three times to the death penalty by his own decree.

Then why will you wait, Athenians? What further crimes do you wish to hear of greater than those we have mentioned? Was it not you and your ancestors who made no allowance for Timotheus,[*] though he had sailed round the Peloponnese and beaten the Spartans in the sea-fight at Corcyra, though his father was Conon who liberated Greece and he himself had taken Samos, Methone, Pydna, Potidaea, and twenty cities besides? You did not take this record into consideration at all, or allow such services to outweigh the case before you or the oaths which you swear before giving your verdict, but fined him a hundred talents, because Aristophon said he had been bribed by the Chians and Rhodians.

Will you then acquit[*] this abominable man, reported not by one individual but by the whole council of the Areopagus, after an investigation, to be holding bribes against you; who, though he has ample means and no male heirs and lacks nothing else that a normal man could need, did not withhold his hand from the bribes offered against his country or suppress his natural depravity, but destroyed entirely his reputation for loyalty towards you, by ranging himself with those whom he once professed to oppose and proving that his counterfeited honesty was sham?

Let every one of you bear these points in mind, Athenians, and remember the present circumstances, which call for good faith, not corruption. You must hate the wicked, wipe out such monsters from the city, and show the world that the mass of people have not been corrupted with a few orators and generals and are not cowed by their reputation; for they realize that with integrity and agreement among ourselves we shall easily triumph, by the grace of the gods, if anyone unjustly attacks us, but that with bribery and treason and the allied vices practiced by men like this no city could survive.

Therefore, Athenians, do not admit any request or plea for pity; do not condone the guilt which you have seen fastened upon the defendants in the plain light of facts, or invalidate the council's report[*]; but one and all assist your country and the laws, since both are now on trial against this man's iniquity.