276
Yet we need not restrict ourselves to bygone history, or rely upon those ancient precedents in our appeal to retributive justice. Within your own lifetime, in the time of the generation now living, not a few men have been tried and condemned. Passing by other instances, let me recall to your memory one or two men who have been punished by death after an embassy far less mischievous to the city. Please take and read this decree.
276
(The Decree is read)
277
By the terms of this decree, men of Athens, you condemned to death the ambassadors named. One of them was Epicrates, who, as I am informed by persons older than myself, was an honest, useful, and popular politician, and one of the men who marched from Peiraeus and restored the democracy.restored the democracy: under Thrasybulus [Dem. 19.280], 403 B.C. (Grote, ch. 65.). No such consideration availed him; and that was right, for a man who accepts so important a mission is not to be virtuous by halves. He must not use the public confidence he has earned as an opportunity for knavery; his duty is simply to do you no wilful wrong at all.
278
Well, if the present defendants have omitted any single one of the misdeeds for which those persons were sentenced to death, execute me on the spot. Look at the decree: Whereas the said ambassadors have disobeyed their instructions. That is the first charge alleged. And did not these men disobey their instructions? Did not the decree say, for the Athenians and the Allies of the Athenians, and did not they declare the Phocians to be excluded? Did it not instruct them to swear in the magistrates in the several cities, and did they not swear in only such persons as Philip sent to them? Did not the decree say that they were not to meet Philip alone in any place whatsoever, and did they not continually have private dealings with Philip?