9
And I should be glad if you would tell me this, since of this affair you are a past master, both in action and in speech: if a man said that you had cast your shield (in the terms of the law it stands,—if anyone asserts that a man has thrown it away, he shall be liable to penalty), would you not prosecute him? Would you be content, if someone said you had cast your shield, to make nothing of it, because casting and throwing away are not the same thing?
10
Nay, if you were one of the Eleven,Magistrates who had powers of summary arrest and judgement in capital and other serious cases, and also the charge of prisons and executions. you would refuse to accept a prisoner arrested on the charge of having pulled off the accuser’s cloak or stripped him of his shirt: by that same rule, you would rather let him go, because he was not called a clothes-stealer! Or if somebody were seized for the abduction of a child, you would declare him to be no kidnapper, since your contention will be about words, and you will have no thought to spare for deeds,—the objects for which words are everywhere made!
11
Then, again, consider this, gentlemen,—for I believe that this man, from indolence and enervation, has not even gone up to attend the AreopagusThe speaker suggests that Theomnestus’s ignorance shows that he has never attended a sitting of the Areopagus, the most august tribunal of Athens.: you all know that in that place, when they try cases of murder, they do not use this term in making the sworn statements, but the one which was used for slandering me; the prosecutor swears that the other party has killed, and the defendant that he has not killed.
