15
If on the other hand, as you now maintain, you thought that he misrepresented the god and, out of partiality for certain persons, had made a false report to the people, rather than propose a decree disputing the dream you ought to have sent to Delphi, as the previous speaker said, and inquired the truth from the god. But instead of doing that, you proposed a decree, entirely conceived by yourself,I follow Colin’s interpretation of the word αὐτοτελής in this passage, although it was often used technically to describe a decree laid before the people without previous consideration by the Council (see Hesychius, sv. αὐτοτελές ψήφισμα). against two tribes, a measure not only most unjust but self-contradictory also. This was what caused your conviction for illegal proposals. It was not the fault of Euxenippus.
16
Let us consider it in this way. The tribes, formed into groups of two, shared out the mountains in Oropus awarded to them by the people. This mountain fell to the lot of Acamantis and Hippothoontis. You proposed that these tribes should restore the mountain to Amphiaraus and the price of produce from it which they had sold; your reason being that the fifty boundary officials had selected it beforehand and set it apart for the god, and that the two tribes had no right to be holding it.
17
A little later in the same decree you propose that the eight tribes shall provide compensation and pay it to the other two so that they shall not suffer unfairly. But if the mountain really belonged to the two tribes and you tried to take it from them, surely we are entitled to be angry. Alternatively, if they had no right to be occupying it and it belonged to the god, why were you proposing that the other tribes should actually pay them compensation? They should have been well content that when restoring the property of the god they did not also pay a fine in cash.
