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Well, about his father I will say nothing disrespectful; though I could tell you a long story about thieving,—however, so far as I am concerned, let his father be worthy of all the compliments that Timocrates may lavish upon him. But suppose that the son of this virtuous father was himself a rascal and a thief; suppose that he once paid a fine of three talents on conviction for treason; suppose that, after he had sat in the Allied Congress,The Second Athenian Confederacy, as reformed in 377. the court found him guilty of embezzlement, and ordered him to make tenfold restitution; suppose that he played false when he went on embassy to Egypt; suppose that he swindled his own brothers—does he not deserve imprisonment all the more if his father was virtuous, and he is what he is? For my part, I fancy that, if LachesThe father of Melanopus; probably not the well-known general who fell at Mantinea, 418. really was virtuous and patriotic, he should himself have sent his degenerate son to jail for implicating him in such infamous scandals. However, let us pass Melanopus by, and fix our gaze upon Glaucetes.
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Was not he the man who first ran away to Deceleia, and, with Deceleia as his base, overran and harried your country? But you all know that. Was it not he who scrupulously paid to the Spartan governor at that place tithes due upon your wives and children and all the rest of his booty;
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and yet, when you had honored him with the office of ambassador, robbed the Goddess at Athens of her tithe of the plunder he took from your enemies? Was it not he who, being appointed treasurer at the Acropolis, stole from that place those prizes of victory which our ancestors carried off from the barbarians, the throne with silver feet, and Mardonius’s scimitar, which weighed three hundred darics? These exploits, however, are so celebrated that they are known to everybody. But in everything else is he not a man of violence? Aye, he has no equal for that.
