Against Leocrates (55-59)

It is now clear, gentlemen, that Leocrates is liable under all the articles of the indictment. He will, I gather, try to mislead you by saying that it was merely as a merchant that he departed on this voyage and that the pursuance of this calling took him from his home to Rhodes. So if he says this, please take note how you may easily expose his lies. The first point is that men travelling as merchants do not leave by the postern on the beach; they embark inside the harbor with all their friends watching to see them off. Secondly, they go alone with their attendant slave, not with their mistress and her maids.

Besides, what need had this Athenian to stay five years in Megara as a merchant? What need had he to send for the sacred images of his family or to sell his house in Athens? The answer is that he had condemned himself as a traitor to his country, as a criminal who had greatly wronged us all. It would be incongruous indeed if you, with the decision in your power, were to dismiss this charge on which he was himself expecting punishment. But quite apart from these objections, we need not, I think, admit this line of defence.

For surely it is outrageous, when men abroad on business were hurrying to the city’s help, that Leocrates alone should sail away at such a time for purposes of trade, since no one would then have thought of adding to his wealth. Men’s only care was to preserve what they already had. I should like Leocrates to tell me what merchandise he could have brought us to render him more useful than he would have been, had he presented himself before the generals for enrollment and had resisted the invaders by fighting at your sides.

Personally I know no help to equal this. He deserves your anger for this conduct and for his explanation too, since he has not hesitated to tell a blatant lie. For he never previously carried on this trade, being in fact a master smith; and subsequently, after his departure, he imported nothing to us from Megara, though he was away for six years without a break. Besides, he had, as it happens, an interest in the two per cent tax,[*] which he would never have left to live abroad on business. So if he says a word about these matters, I do not doubt that you will stop him.

He will perhaps in his impetuosity raise the argument, suggested to him by certain of his advocates, that he is not liable on a charge of treason, since he was not responsible for dockyards, gates or camps nor in fact for any of the city’s concerns. My own view is that those in charge of these positions could have betrayed a part of your defences only, whereas it was the whole city which Leocrates surrendered. Again, it is the living only whom men of their kind harm, but Leocrates has wronged the dead as well, depriving them of their ancestral rites.