88
Is there any man who would have testified, or any prosecutor who would have undertaken to present such proof of the act? Surely not. What then? Were the accused acquitted? No, by Heracles! They were punished with death, though their crime was far less, by Zeus and Apollo, than that of this defendant; those poor wretches met such a fate because they were unable to defend themselves against old age and poverty together, the greatest of human misfortunes; the defendant should suffer it because he is unwilling to restrain his own lewdness.
89
Now if this trial were taking place in another city, and that city were the referee, I should have demanded that you should be my witnesses, you who best know that I am speaking the truth. But since the trial is at Athens, and you are at the same time judges and witnesses of the truth of what I say, it is my place to refresh your memory, and yours not to disbelieve me. For I think Timarchus’ anxiety is not for himself alone, fellow citizens, but for all the others also whose practices have been the same as his.
90
For if in the future, as always in the past, this practice is going to be carried on in secret, and in lonely places and in private houses, and if the man who best knows the facts, but has defiled one of his fellow citizens, is to be liable to the severest punishment if he testifies to the truth, while the man on trial, who has been denounced by the testimony of his own life and of the truth, is to demand that he be judged, not by the facts that are notorious, but by the testimony of witnesses, then the law is done away with, and so is the truth, while a plain path is marked out by which the worst wrongdoers may escape.
