A man forces his way into the stronghold of a tyrant, with the intention of killing him. Not finding the tyrant himself, he kills his son, and leaves the sword sticking in his body. The tyrant, coming, and finding his son dead, slays himself with the same sword.—The assailant now claims that the killing of the son entitles him to the reward of tyrannicide.
1
Two tyrants—a father advanced in years, a son in the prime of life, waiting only to step into his nefarious heritage—have fallen by my hand on a single day: I come before this court, claiming but one reward for my twofold service. My case is unique. With one blow I have rid you of two monsters: with my sword I slew the son; grief for the son slew the father. The misdeeds of the tyrant are sufficiently punished: he has lived to see his son perish untimely; and—wondrous sequel!— the tyrant’s own hand has freed us from tyranny. I slew the son, and used his death to slay another: in his life he shared the iniquities of his father; in his death, so far as in him lay, he was a parricide.
2
Mine is the hand that freed you, mine the sword that accomplished all; as to the order and manner of procedure, there, indeed, I have deviated from the common practice of tyrannicides: I slew the son, who had strength to resist me, and left my sword to deal with the aged father.
3
In acting thus, I had thought to increase your obligation to me; a twofold deliverance—I had supposed—would entitle me to a twofold reward; for I have freed you not from tyranny alone, but from the fear of tyranny, and by removing the heir of iniquity have made your salvation sure. And now it seems that my services are to go for nothing; I, the preserver of the constitution, am to forgo the recompense prescribed by its laws. It is surely from no patriotic motive, as he asserts, that my adversary disputes my claim; rather it is from grief at the loss of the tyrants, and a desire to avenge their death.
