Thesauros Literature Oratory Κατά Κτησιφώντος

Κατά Κτησιφώντος

Κατά Κτησιφώντος Aeschines
198 Whoever therefore in the discussion on the penalty asks for your vote,The reference is still to the request of influential men who come into court to help their friends. is begging you to mitigate your anger; but he who in the first speech asks for your vote is asking you to surrender your oath, to surrender the law, to surrender the democratic constitution things which no man has a right to ask you to surrender, nor any man to grant another for his asking. Bid them, therefore, to allow you to cast your first ballot according to the laws, before they plead on the question of penalty.
199 In short, fellow citizens, for my part I am almost ready to say that we ought to pass a special law governing indictments for illegal motions, which shall forbid either accuser or defendant to call in advocates. For the question of right involved is not an indefinite one, but is defined by your own laws. For as in carpentry, when we wish to know what is straight and what is not, we apply the carpenters’ rule, which serves as our standard,
200 so in indictments for illegal motions there lies ready to our hand as a rule of justice this tablet, containing the measure proposed and the laws which it transgresses.The tablet is the bulletin-board which had been publicly posted in advance to the trial, containing the indictment, the motion which was attacked, and the laws which were alleged to be violated by the motion. Show that these agree one with another, Ctesiphon, and then take your seat. Why need you call Demosthenes to your support? When you overleap the just defence and call forward a rascal and a rhetorician, you cheat the ears of the jury, you injure the city, you undermine the democracy.

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