Against Nicomachus (21-25)

Witnesses

and has endeavored to mulct the State in a sum of six talents each year,—and that too when he saw her in difficulties for money, the Lacedaemonians threatening us if we failed to remit them their payments, the Boeotians taking reprisals because we could not refund two talents, and the shipping sheds and the walls falling to pieces; when he knew that the Council for the time being is not led into error if it has sufficient means for the administration, but is forced in a time of difficulty to accept impeachments, to confiscate the property of our citizens, and to be swayed by the most unprincipled of its orators!

You ought therefore, gentlemen, to be incensed, not with those who happen to be on the Council, but with those who reduce the State to these awful straits. And the men who seek to rob the public purse are watching closely to see how Nicomachus will fare in these proceedings. If you do not punish him, you will grant them absolute licence; but if you condemn him and award him your heaviest sentence, by the same vote you will reform the rest, and will have done justice upon this man.

Understand, gentlemen of the jury, that it will be an example to the rest, and will deter them from committing offences against you, if instead of punishing unskillful speakers you exact requital from the skillful. And from whom amongst our citizens could it be more suitably exacted than from Nicomachus? Who has rendered less service or done more wrong to the city?

Appointed to transcribe our code of duties, secular and sacred, he has offended against both. Remember that ere now you have put many of the citizens to death for peculation: yet the injury that they had done you was only for the passing moment, whereas these men,[*] by taking bribes for the version that they made of our laws, damage the city for all time.