Against Agoratus (86-90)

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.

Your duty, gentlemen of the jury, is to reject these arguments: you must bid him direct his defence to these questions—Did he make no depositions? Are those men not dead? Besides, I consider that the oaths and agreements in no way affect our position regarding this man. For the oaths have been taken between the parties of the town and of the Peiraeus.

If indeed, he was in the town while we were in the Peiraeus, the agreements would have been something for him to count upon; but the truth is that he was in the Peiraeus, like me and Dionysius and all these persons who are for punishing the man, so that we are faced with no objection there. For there was no oath taken between the men of the Peiraeus and the men of the Peiraeus.