46
For it would indeed be an outrageous thing when you yourselves, after having come to terms with those who in the time of the oligarchy put to death without trial numbers of your countrymen, abide by your compact with them,The allusion is to the amnesty declared after the expulsion of the Thirty Tyrants. For this gentleness of the democracy see Aristot. Ath. Pol. 22.4. as men of honor should do, that you should allow this man, who was reconciled with my father while he lived, and won many advantages to which he had no right, now to renew the quarrel and to speak evil of that father when he is no more. Do not suffer this, men of the jury.
47
If it be possible, prevent him from acting in this way; but if he persists in defying you and in speaking evil of my father, remember that he is bearing witness against himself that he is no son of his. For those who are true-born children, even though they may quarrel with their fathers while they are alive yet speak well of them when they are dead; whereas those who are accounted sons, but are not in truth children of their supposed fathers, quarrel with them without scruple while they are alive, and think nothing of slandering them when they are dead.
48
And, besides, think how absurd it is that this fellow should abuse my father for his failings toward him, when it was thanks to this father’s failingsThere is a play on the double sense of ἁμαρτάνειν, which is often used as a euphemism for the frailties of love.—Paley. that he became a citizen of your state. I, on my part, have, thanks to the mother of these men, been deprived of two-thirds of my property, but for all that I have too much respect for you to speak disparagingly of her.
