Phalaris (2.2-2.6)

for you to hesitate about this matter at all and to submit us the question whether we should receive the gift or send it back again—even this I, for my part, consider impious; indeed, nothing short of extreme sacrilege, for the business is nothing else than temple-robbery, far more serious than other forms of it because it is more impious not to allow people to make gifts when they will than to steal gifts after they are made.

A man of Delphi myself and an equal participant in our public good name if we maintain it and in our disrepute if we acquire it from the present case, I beg you neither to lock the temple to worshippers nor to give the world a bad opinion of the city as one that quibbles over things sent the god, and tries givers by ballot and jury. No one would venture to give in future if he knew that the god would not accept anything not previously approved by the men of Delphi.

As a matter of fact, Apollo has already voted justly about the gift. At any rate, if he hated Phalaris or loathed his present, he could easily have sunk it in the middle of the Ionian sea, along with the ship that carried it. But, quite to the contrary,

By this it is clear that he accepts the monarch’s worship. You must cast the same vote as he, and add this bull to the other attractions of the temple: for it would be most preposterous that a’man who has sent so magnificent a present to our god should get the sentence of exclusion from the sanctuary and should be paid for his piety by being pronounced unworthy even to make an oblation.

The man who. holds the contrary opinion ranted about the tyrant’s murders and assaults and robberies and abductions as if he had just put into port from Acragas, all but saying that he had been an eye-witness; we know, however, that he has not even been as far from ‘home as the boat. We should not give such stories full credence even when told by those who profess to be the victims, for it is doubtful whether they are telling the truth. Much less should we ourselves play the accuser in matters of which we have no knowledge.