In Defence of Euxenippus (16-20)

Let us consider it in this way. The tribes, formed into groups of two, shared out the mountains in Oropus awarded to them by the people. This mountain fell to the lot of Acamantis and Hippothoontis. You proposed that these tribes should restore the mountain to Amphiaraus and the price of produce from it which they had sold; your reason being that the fifty boundary officials had selected it beforehand and set it apart for the god, and that the two tribes had no right to be holding it.

A little later in the same decree you propose that the eight tribes shall provide compensation and pay it to the other two so that they shall not suffer unfairly. But if the mountain really belonged to the two tribes and you tried to take it from them, surely we are entitled to be angry. Alternatively, if they had no right to be occupying it and it belonged to the god, why were you proposing that the other tribes should actually pay them compensation? They should have been well content that when restoring the property of the god they did not also pay a fine in cash.

These proposals, when examined in court, were considered unsatisfactory, and the jury condemned you. So if you had been acquitted in your trial, Euxenippus would not have misrepresented the god: because you happened to be convicted, must ruin fall on him?[*] And when you, who proposed a decree like that, were fined a mere twenty-five drachmas, is the man who lay down in the temple at the people’s request even to be refused a grave in Attica?

Yes, you say; for he committed a serious crime in regard to the cup which he allowed Olympias to dedicate to the statue of Health.[*] You think that if you bring her name irrelevantly into the case to serve your own ends and accuse Euxenippus of deceitful flattery, you will bring down the jury’s hatred and anger upon him. The thing to do, my friend, is not to use the name of Olympias and Alexander in the hope of harming some citizen.

Wait till they send the Athenian people some injunctions which are unjust or inappropriate. Then is the time for you to get up and oppose them in the interests of your city, disputing the cause of justice with their envoys and resorting to the Congress of the Greeks[*] as the champion of your country. But you never stood up or spoke about them there; it is only here that you hate Olympias