Against Agoratus (44-45)

It gives me pain, indeed, to recall the calamities that have befallen the city, but it is a necessity, gentlemen of the jury, at the present moment, so that you may know how richly Agoratus deserves your pity! For you know the character and number of the citizens who were brought away from Salamis,[*] and the way in which they were destroyed by the Thirty. You know what a great number of the people of Eleusis shared that calamity.

You remember also our people here who were haled to prison on account of private enmities; and who, having done no harm to the city, were compelled to perish by the most shameful, the most infamous, of deaths. Some left elderly parents behind them, who were expecting to be supported in their old age by their own children and, when they should end their days, to be laid by them in the grave; others left sisters unwedded, and others little children who still required much tendance.