Let the jury hear the other decree, clerk, relating to the men who withdrew to DeceleaDecelea, a town in the North of Attica, was occupied by the Peloponnesians in 413 B.C. and therefore served as a haven for deserters from Athens. Lycurgus seems to be the only writer who mentions this decree. when the people were besieged by the Spartans, so that they will realize that the punishments inflicted by our ancestors on traitors were uniform and self-consistent. Read it.

Decree

You hear this decree too, gentlemen. It says that they condemned any who moved to Decelea in war-time and laid it down that those who were caught returning should be led by any Athenian who cared to do so to the Thesmothetae who should take them into custody and hand them over to the executioner.Literally: the man in charge of the pit. τὸ ὄρυγμα is the same as τὸ βάραθρον, the cleft into which criminals at Athens were thrown. If they dealt thus with men who merely changed their place in Attica, how will you treat Leocrates who in wartime fled from his city and his country to Rhodes and deserted the state? Will you not kill him? If you do not, how can you pass as the descendants of those men?

You ought also to hear the decree relating to the man executed in Salamis.Lycurgus is probably alluding to the stoning of Lycidas (see note on Lyc. 1.71), which Herodotus (Hdt. 9.5) puts after Salamis. Demosthenes (Dem. 18.204), though apparently alluding to the same story, calls the traitor Cyrsilus and places the incident before the battle. Though he had only attempted to speak treason against the city, the Council, after removing their crowns, killed him with their own hands. It is an admirable decree, gentlemen, and well worthy of your ancestors. Their nobility, revealed in their characters, was shown too in their punishment of criminals.

Decree

What is your view, gentlemen? Do you think that if you wish to emulate your forefathers, it is in keeping to allow Leacrates to live? When they dispatched like that one who merely betrayed with his lips a city already desolate, how ought you, whose city prospered at the time, to treat the man who did in very fact desert it? Ought you not to outdo them in severity? When they chastised so sternly those who tried to rob them of the security which the people offered,i.e. those who deserted to Decelea. The sense seems to demand an object for ἀποστερεῖν. Hence the proposals by Reiske and Blass to supply one. how ought you to treat a traitor to the people’s own safety? And if they, from considerations of honor only, took vengeance on criminals in this way, how should you react when your country is at stake?

These instances suffice to show you the attitude of our ancestors towards those who broke the city’s laws. Nevertheless I want also to remind you of the pillar in the Council Chamber which commemorates traitors and enemies of democracy. For if my point is backed by frequent illustrations, I am rendering your verdict easy. After the rule of the Thirty, your fathers, who had suffered from citizens what no other Greek had ever thought fit to inflict and had barely managed to return to their country, barred all the paths to crime, having learnt by experience the principles and methods followed by men who wished to overthrow democracy.