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Here are other conditions of lawful homicide. If any man, while violently and illegally seizing another, shall be straightway slain in self-defence, the legislator ordains that there shall be no penalty for his death. I beg you to observe the wisdom of this law. By adding the word straightway after indicating the conditions of lawful homicide, the legislator has excluded any long premeditation of injury and by the expression, in self-defence, he makes it clear that he is giving indulgence to the actual sufferer, and to no other man. Thus the law permits homicide in immediate self-defence; but Aristocrates has made no such exception. He says, without qualification, if anyone ever kills,—that is, even if he kill righteously, or as the laws permit.
61
I shall be told that this is a quibble of ours; who will ever be violently and illegally seized by Charidemus? Everybody. Surely you are aware that any man who has troops at command lays hands on whomsoever he thinks he can overpower, demanding ransom. Heaven and Earth! Is it not monstrous, is it not manifestly contrary to law,—I do not mean merely to the statute law but to the unwritten law of our common humanity,—that I should not be permitted to defend myself against one who violently seizes my goods as though I were an enemy? And that will be so, if the slaying of Charidemus is forbidden even on those terms,—if even though he be iniquitously plundering another man’s property, his slayer is to be liable to seizure, though the statute ordains that he who takes life under such conditions shall have impunity.
62
Read the next statute.
62
Statute
62
Whosoever, whether magistrate or private citizen, shall cause this ordinance to be frustrated, or shall alter the same, shall be disfranchised with his children and his property.
