11
“Because you did not slay the tyrant himself; and the law bestows the reward upon the slayer of a tyrant!” Is there any difference, tell me, between slaying him and causing his death? For my part I think there is none. All that the lawgiver had in view was simply liberty, democracy, freedom from dire ills. He bestowed honour upon this, he considered this worthy of compensation; and you cannot say that it has come about otherwise than through me. For if I caused a death which made it impossible for that man to live, I myself accomplished his slaying. The deed was mine, the hand was his. Then quibble no longer about the manner of his end; do not enquire how he died, but whether he no longer lives, whether his no longer living is due to me. Otherwise, it seems to me that you will be likely to carry your enquiry still further, to the point of carping at your benefactors if one of them should do the killing with a stone or a staff or in some other way, and not with a sword.
11
What if I had starved the tyrant out of his hold and thus occasioned the necessity of his death? Would you in that case require me to have killed him with my own hand, or say that I failed in any respect of satisfying the law, even though the malefactor had been done to death more cruelly? Enquire into one thing only, demand this alone, disturb yourself about this alone, whether any one of the villains is left, any expectation of fearfulness, any reminder of our woes. If everything is uncontaminated and peaceful, only a cheat would wish to utilise the manner of accomplishing what has been done in order to take away the gratuity for the hard-won results.
