8
Now apart from all this, whenever a man lodges with the judicial Archons an objection against a decree or law, that law or decree is invalid and the mover or proposer has not the impudence to employ violence, but loyally accepts your decision, even if he is the foremost orator or administrator in your city. Yet is it not absurd that, while decrees passed by you in full assembly as in accordance with the laws should be invalid, you should imagine that you ought to make the whim of Aristogeiton to flout the laws more authoritative than the laws themselves?
9
Again, when a plaintiff fails to obtain a fifth part of the votes, in cases where the laws forbid him henceforward to indict anyone or arrest him or give him into custody, in the same way none of those liable to these disqualifications ever dreams of defying them. But for Aristogeiton, it seems, and for Aristogeiton alone, no court, no law has authority higher than his own caprice.
10
Neither you nor your ancestors ever repented of observing these rules, for it is the salvation of democracy that it overcomes its enemies either by good counsel or by arms, but submits to its laws either by free choice or under constraint; and that this principle is sound, is allowed even by the defendant himself.
11
For after the disasters to the Greek forces at Chaeroneia, when the very foundations of our State were threatened with the utmost danger, when Hypereides proposed that the disfranchised citizens should be reinstated in order that, if any such danger should menace our State, all classes might unite wholeheartedly in the struggle for liberty, the defendant indicted this decree as unconstitutional and conducted his case in court.
