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SOLON You yourself, Anacharsis, can regulate that better, wherever you think that my discussion is not fully clear, or that it is meandering far from its channel in a random stream; for you can interpose any question that you will, and cut it short. But if what I say is not foreign to the case and beside the mark, there will be nothing, I suppose, to hinder, even if I should speak at length, since that is the tradition in the court of the Areopagus, which judges our cases of manslaughter. Whenever it goes up to the Areopagus and holds a sitting to judge a case of manslaughter or premeditated wounding or arson, an opportunity to be heard is given to each party to the case, and the plaintiff and defendant plead in turn, either in person or through professional speakers whom they bring to the bar to plead in their behalf. As long as they speak about the case, the court tolerates them and listens in silence; but if anyone prefaces his speech with an introduction in order to make the court more favourable, or brings emotion or exaggeration into the case— tricks that are often devised by the disciples of rhetoric to influence the judges,—then the crier appears and silences them at once, preventing them from talking nonsense to the court and from tricking the case out in words, in order that the Areopagites may see the facts bare. So, Anacharsis, I make you an Areopagite for the present. Listen to me according to the custom of the court and tell me to be silent if you perceive that I am plying you with rhetoric. But as long as what I say is germane to the case, let me have the right to speak at length. Besides, we are not going to converse in the sun now, so that you would find it burdensome if my talk were prolonged; the shade is thick, and we have plenty of time.
