Against Agoratus (86-87)

But, in my view, the Eleven who authorized this arrest, without a thought of supporting Agoratus’s plea,—on which he was even then insisting,—were quite correct in compelling Dionysius, who sought the warrant for arrest, to add the words in the act: surely that must be so, in dealing with a man who, first before five hundred, and then again before the whole body of the Athenians, made depositions whereby he took the lives of some of them, and thus was responsible for their death.

For you cannot of course suppose that in the act only applies to a man felled with the stroke of a club or a dagger; since, by your argument, nobody will be found to have actually killed the men against whom you deposed. For no one either struck them or assassinated them, but your deposition had the effect of compelling them to die.[*] Then is not the author of their death a person caught in the act? Now, who can be that author but you, who made the depositions? So clearly you, who killed them, have been caught in the act.