8
Or if he attends a meeting in any place with intent to undermine the democracy, or forms a political society; or if anyone betrays a city, or ships, or any land, or naval force, or being an orator, makes speeches contrary to the interests of the Athenian people, receiving bribes. The opening provisions of the law were made applicable by you to the entire citizen body, since those are offences which anyone might commit; but the latter part is directed against the orators themselves, in whose hands the proposing of measures rests.
9
You would have been insane if you had framed the law in any other way; if, when the orators enjoy both the honors and the profits of speaking, you had exposed the ordinary citizen to the risks that go with them. Nevertheless, Polyeuctus is bold enough to assert, though he is bringing in an impeachment, that defendants must not make use of the impeachment law.
10
All other prosecutors who think it necessary, when speaking first, to steal the defendants’ arguments from them encourage the jury to refuse to listen to any defendant who does not keep within the scope of the law, to challenge his statements and tell the clerk to read the law. The opposite is true of you: it is recourse to law of which you think you should deprive Euxenippus in his defence.
11
You also maintain that no one should even help him or be his advocate, and you exhort the jury to refuse a hearing to those who come up to speak. And yet, of the many good institutions of the city, what is better or more democraticCompare Hyp. 1.10. than our custom, when some private person is facing the danger of a trial and cannot conduct his own defence, of allowing any citizen who wishes to come forward to help him and give the jury a fair statement of the case?
