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When Hipparchus, the son of Charmus,Lycurgus appears to be the sole authority for this story. Hipparchus, a relation of the Pisistratids, was the first Athenian to be ostracized (cf. Aristot. Const. Ath. 22 and Plut. Nic. 11). did not stand his trial for treason before the people but let the case go by default, they sentenced him to death. Then, as they did not secure his person to answer for the crime, they took down his statue from the Acropolis and, melting it down, made a pillar of it, on which they decreed that the names of sinners and traitors should be inscribed. Hipparchus himself has his name recorded on this pillar and all other traitors too.
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Clerk, please take the decree which authorized the statue of Hipparchus to be taken down from the Acropolis and then the inscription at the base of the pillar with the names of the traitors later engraved upon it and read them out.
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Decree and Text of Inscription on the Pillar
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What is your impression of them, gentlemen? Had they the same attitude as yourselves towards wrongdoers? Or did they, by obliterating the memorial of the traitor, since they could not command his person, punish him with all the means at their disposal? The simple fact of melting down the bronze statue was not enough for them; they wished to leave to their successors a lasting memorial of their attitude to traitors.
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Let the jury hear the other decree, clerk, relating to the men who withdrew to DeceleaDecelea, a town in the North of Attica, was occupied by the Peloponnesians in 413 B.C. and therefore served as a haven for deserters from Athens. Lycurgus seems to be the only writer who mentions this decree. when the people were besieged by the Spartans, so that they will realize that the punishments inflicted by our ancestors on traitors were uniform and self-consistent. Read it.
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Decree
