The Tyrannicide (2-4)

It was I, then, who put an end to the tyranny, and the sword that accomplished everything was mine. But I inverted the order of executions, and made an innovation in the method of putting criminals to death, for I myself destroyed the stronger, the one capable of self-defence, and resigned the old man to my unaided sword.

It was my thought, therefore, that I should get for this a still more generous gift from you, and should receive rewards to match the number of the slain, because I had freed you not only from your present ills, but from your expectation of those that were to come, and had accorded you established liberty, since no successor in wrongdoing had been left alive. But now there is danger that after all these achievements I may come away from you unrewarded and may be the only one to be excluded from the recompense afforded by those laws which I maintained.

My adversary here seems to me to be taking this course, not, as he says, because of his concern for the interests of the state, but because of his grief over the dead men, and in the endeavour to avenge them upon the man who caused their death.

On your part, however, gentlemen of the jury, bear with me for a moment while I recount the history of their tyranny, although you know it well; for then you can appreciate the greatness of my benefaction and you yourselves will be more exultant, thinking of all that you have escaped.

It is not as it has often before been with others; it is not a simple tyranny and a single slavery that we have endured, nor a single master’s caprice that we have borne. Nay, of all those who have ever experienced such adversity we alone had two masters