Against Leocrates (65-69)

It was not their way, when prescribing the death penalty for the thief who stole a hundred talents, to approve a punishment less severe for one who took ten drachmas. Again with sacrilege: for a great offence they inflicted death, and for a small one too they had no milder punishment. They did not differentiate between him who killed a slave and him who killed a free man, by fining one and outlawing the other.

For all breaches of the law alike, however small, they fixed upon the death penalty, making no special allowances, in their assessment of the magnitude of crimes, for the individual circumstances of each. On one point only they insisted: was the crime such that, if it became more widespread, it would do serious harm to society? And it is absurd to face this question in any other way. Just imagine, gentlemen. Suppose someone had entered the Metroon[*] and erased one law and then excused himself on the grounds that the city was not endangered by the loss of just this one. Would you not have killed him? I think you would have been justified in doing so, at least if you intended to save the other laws.

The same applies here: you must punish this man with death if you intend to make the other citizens better, oblivious of the fact that he is only one. You must consider the act. There are not many like him. In my opinion we have our good fortune to thank for that; but Leocrates, I think, deserves a more severe punishment on this account, since he alone of his fellow citizens sought safety for himself rather than for the city.

Nothing angers me so much, gentlemen, as to hear some person among his supporters saying that to have left the city is not treason, since your ancestors once left it when they crossed to Salamis during their war with Xerxes: a critic so senseless and contemptuous of you that he has presumed to confuse the most honorable action with the most base.

For where have men not proclaimed the valor of those heroes? Who is so grudging, who so completely without spirit, that he would not wish to have shared in their exploits? They did not desert Athens; they simply changed the scene, making an honorable decision in the face of the growing menace.