94
Moreover, before these proceedings, Solon ordered that the laws should be exposed before the statues of the eponymous heroesThe statues of the heroes who gave their names to the ten tribes stood in the Agora near the council-chamber. and handed in to the town-clerk to recite them at the meetings of the Assembly, so that each of you may hear them more than once and digest them at leisure, and if they are just and expedient, may add them to the statute-book. Now, numerous as those enactments are, Leptines yonder has observed not one of them, for, if he had, I do not think that you would ever have consented to pass his law. We on the other hand, Athenians, have observed them all, and we are submitting a much better and more equitable law than his. You will realize that when you hear it.
95
Take and read first of all the clauses of his law which we have indicted, and next the clauses we propose to substitute for them. Read.By this, if correct, must be meant the preamble of the amended law, setting forth the objections to the existing law of Leptines. The second law read would be the amendments proposed; and at the end of Dem. 20.97 the whole law as amended is read.
95
[The law is read]
95
These are the parts of the law of Leptines which we arraign as unsatisfactory. Next in order read our proposed amendments. Pray attend, gentlemen of the jury, to these as they are recited. Read.
95
[The law is read]
96
Stop there. The laws now in force contain this provision—a capital one, men of Athens, and unambiguous—that all rewards granted by the people shall be valid. Equitable too, by all the powers! So Leptines should not have proposed his own law until he had indicted and repealed this. As it is, neglecting proof of his own violation of the law, he nevertheless proceeded to legislate, in face of the fact that another law proclaims his law indictable for this very offence, namely, for contradicting previous legislation. Here is the very law in question.
96
[The law is read]
