That he asserted that I had killed my father is in the knowledge of many of you, and they are my witnesses. But that I have not done it is evident; for I am thirty-two years old, and this is the twentieth year since your return to the city. You see, then, that I was twelve years old when my father was put to death by the Thirty, so that I did not even know what an oligarchy was, nor was I capable of defending my father. Nor, again, was his property a motive for my having designs upon him; for my elder brother got everything, and left us destitute. Perhaps he will say that it is not among the forbidden things to say a man has killed his father, since the law does not prohibit this, but disallows the word murderer. But I think our dispute ought not to be over mere terms, but over the intention shown in acts, and that everyone knows that all who have killed others are murderers of those same persons, and those who are murderers of another have killed that man. For it would be too great a task for the lawgiver to write all the terms that have the same meaning: he preferred to mention one which should indicate all. I presume it cannot be that, if anyone who calls you a father-beater or a mother-beater is liable to a penalty, at the same time a person who says that you strike your male or female parent is to escape punishment. So, if someone calls a man a shield-caster, he is to be immune, since the law imposes a penalty for saying that a man has thrown away his shield, but not for saying he has cast it. Similarly, if you were one of the Eleven, you would not accept a prisoner arrested for stripping a man of his cloak or his shirt, unless he were given the name of clothes-stealer.