Against Leocrates (10-14)

I assure you, gentlemen, that if you condemn this man you will do more than merely punish him; you will be giving all younger men an incentive to right conduct. For there are two influences at work in the education of the young: the punishments suffered by wrongdoers and the reward available to the virtuous. With these alternatives before their eyes they are deterred by fear from the one and attracted by desire for honor to the other. You must therefore give your minds to the trial on hand and let your first consideration be justice.

In my speech also justice shall come first; on no occasion will I have recourse to falsehoods or irrelevance. Most of the speakers who come before you behave in the strangest possible manner, either giving you advice from the platform on public affairs or wasting their charges and calumnies on any subject except the one on which you are going to vote. Either course is easy, whether they choose to express an opinion on questions about which you are not deliberating or else to invent a charge to which no one is going to reply.

But it is wrong that they should ask for justice from you when you give your vote and yet be unjust themselves in handling the prosecution. And yet the blame for this is yours, gentlemen; for you have granted this freedom to speakers appearing before you, although you have, in the council of the Areopagus, the finest model in Greece: a court so superior to others that even the men convicted in it admit that its judgements are just.

Let it be your pattern, and, like it, do not give way to speakers who digress from the point. If you take this advice, defendants will receive an unbiased hearing, accusers will be least able to give false information, and you will best be able to make the verdict in keeping with your oath. For those who have not been rightly informed cannot give their verdict rightly.

A further point for you to notice, gentlemen, is this: the trial of Leocrates is not comparable with that of other ordinary men. For if the defendant were unknown in Greece, your verdict, whether good or bad, would be a matter solely for yourselves to contemplate. But where this man is concerned, whatever judgement you may give will be discussed by every Greek, since it is common knowledge that the conduct of your ancestors was just the opposite of his. He won notoriety by his voyage to Rhodes and the discreditable report of you which he made officially to the Rhodians and to those merchants residing there;