Against Philippides (8-12)

You have concluded that one person will be immortal,[*] yet you sentenced to death a city as old as ours, never realizing the simple fact that no tyrant has yet risen from the dead, while many cities, though utterly destroyed, have come again to power. You and your party took no account of the history of the Thirty or of the city’s triumph over her assailants from without and those within her walls who joined in the attack upon her.[*] It was well known that you were all watching the city’s fortunes, waiting for the chance to say or do something against the people.

Will you dare then presently to mention opportunities, when the opportunities you sought were for the city’s ruin? Have you brought your children with you into court, Philippides?[*] Are you going to bring them soon on to the platform and so claim pity from the jury? You have no right to pity. When others felt compassion for the city’s misfortunes, you and your like were exulting over her.[*] They had resolved to save Greece in a spirit which ill deserved the fate they met. But you, who are unjustly bringing Athens into the depths of shame, deserve the punishment you are now about.to suffer.

Why should you spare this man, gentlemen? Because he is a democrat? Why, you are well aware that he has chosen to be the slave of tyrants and is ready on the other hand to give the people orders. Would it be because he is a good man? No; for you twice condemned him as a criminal. True, you may say, but he is useful. Granted; but if you use a man whom you are known to have condemned as wicked, it will appear either that your judgements are wrong or that you welcome wicked men. It is not therefore right to take upon yourselves this man’s misdeeds. On the contrary: the transgressor must be punished.

And if anyone comes forward with the plea that he has twice before been convicted for illegal proposals and that therefore you should acquit him,[*] please do just the opposite, and that for two reasons. In the first place it is a piece of good fortune, when a man is known to have proposed illegal measures, that you should catch him coming up for trial a third time. He is not a good man and need not be spared as such. Indeed you should rid yourselves of him as quickly as you can, since he has twice already proved his character to you.

And secondly, compare the case of false witness. If people have been twice convicted of this, you have allowed them to refrain from giving evidence a third time, even of events at which they have themselves been present, so that, if anyone is disfranchised, responsibility shall rest, not on the people, but on the man himself, for continuing to bear false witness. Similarly men convicted of illegal proposals need not bring forward proposals in future. If they do they are clearly actuated by some private motive. So that people of this type deserve punishment, not pity.