10
I assure you, gentlemen, that if you condemn this man you will do more than merely punish him; you will be giving all younger men an incentive to right conduct. For there are two influences at work in the education of the young: the punishments suffered by wrongdoers and the reward available to the virtuous. With these alternatives before their eyes they are deterred by fear from the one and attracted by desire for honor to the other. You must therefore give your minds to the trial on hand and let your first consideration be justice.
11
In my speech also justice shall come first; on no occasion will I have recourse to falsehoods or irrelevance. Most of the speakers who come before you behave in the strangest possible manner, either giving you advice from the platform on public affairs or wasting their charges and calumnies on any subject except the one on which you are going to vote. Either course is easy, whether they choose to express an opinion on questions about which you are not deliberating or else to invent a charge to which no one is going to reply.
12
But it is wrong that they should ask for justice from you when you give your vote and yet be unjust themselves in handling the prosecution. And yet the blame for this is yours, gentlemen; for you have granted this freedom to speakers appearing before you, although you have, in the council of the Areopagus, the finest model in Greece: a court so superior to others that even the men convicted in it admit that its judgements are just.
13
Let it be your pattern, and, like it, do not give way to speakers who digress from the point. If you take this advice, defendants will receive an unbiased hearing, accusers will be least able to give false information, and you will best be able to make the verdict in keeping with your oath. For those who have not been rightly informed cannot give their verdict rightly.
