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,


 

he vouchsafed them a calm passage, they say, and a
safe arrival at Cirrha.

 

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.