Against Meidias

Perseus Greek · Perseus Greek · 255 sections

89.1
But the lawsuit only involved a thousand drachmas. True, you will say; but the galling thing is to be made to pay unfairly, and it was the unfairness of it that caused him to let the day of payment pass unnoticed. But he noticed his mistake the same day, which is the strongest possible proof that Strato had done him no wrong; and he has not yet paid a single drachma. But of that later.
90.1
But of course he could have moved for a fresh trial on the ground of nullity, and so made me the object of his litigation as at the first. But no; that was not his game. To save him from defending a suit in which the penalty was fixed by law at ten minas—the suit in which he neglected to apppear—to save him from paying the penalty if guilty or if innocent, a citizen of Athens must needs be disfranchised, and must obtain neither pardon nor right of defence nor any sort of equitable treatment, privileges extended even to those whose guilt is established.
91.1
But now that he has disfranchised the man he wanted to, and you have indulged him in this; now that he has sated that shameless temper that prompted him to this course, has he finished the business? Has he paid the fine, to escape which he ruined the poor fellow? Not a brass farthing of it to this day! He submits rather to be the defendant in an action for ejectment. So the one man is disfranchised and ruined on a side issue; the other is unscathed and is playing havoc with the laws, the arbitrators, and everything else that he pleases.
92.1
Moreover, he has secured the validity of the award against the arbitrator, which he maneuvered to get without serving a summons, while the suit which he lost to me, wittingly and after due summons, this he renders invalid. Yet if such is the vengeance that he claims from arbitrators who have given judgement against him by default, what vengeance ought you to wreak on a man who openly and wantonly transgresses your laws? For if disfranchisement and loss of all legal and civil rights is a fitting punishment for that other offence, death seems an inadequate one for this reckless outrage.
93.1
However, to prove the truth of my statements, please call the witnesses, and also read the law concerning arbitrators.
93.2
The Witnesses
93.3
We, Nicostratus of Myrrhinus and Phanias of Aphidna, know that Demosthenes, for whom we appear, and Meidias, who is being prosecuted by Demosthenes, when Demosthenes brought his action against him for slander, chose Strato as arbitrator; and when the statutory day arrived, Meidias did not appear in court but abandoned the case. Judgement having gone by default against Meidias, we know that Meidias tried to induce Strato, the arbitrator, and us, who were at that time Archons, to reverse the judgement against him, and he offered us fifty drachmas, and, when we resented his offer, he threatened us and so departed. Also we know that on this account Strato was victimized by Meidias and was disfranchised contrary to all justice.
94.1
Read also the law concerning arbitrators.
94.2
The Law
94.3
If any parties are in dispute concerning private contracts and wish to choose any arbitrator, it shall be lawful for them to choose whomsoever they wish. But when they have chosen by mutual agreement, they shall abide by his decisions and shall not transfer the same charges from him to another court, but the judgements of the arbitrator shall be final.
95.1
Call also Strato, the victim of this persecution, for no doubt he will be allowed to stand up in court.
95.2
This man, Athenians, is a poor man perhaps, but certainly not a bad man. He was once a citizen and served at the proper age in all the campaigns; he has done nothing reprehensible, yet now there he stands silent, stripped not only of all our common privileges, but also of the right to speak or complain; he is not even allowed to tell you whether he has suffered justly or unjustly.
96.1
All this he has endured at the hands of Meidias, and from the wealth and pride of Meidias, because he himself is poor and friendless and just one of the multitude. If in violation of the laws he had accepted the fifty drachmas and changed his verdict from a condemnation to an acquittal, he would now be a full citizen, untouched by harm and sharing with the rest of us in our common rights; but because he disregarded Meidias in comparison with justice and feared the laws more than his threats, therefore he has met with this great and terrible misfortune through the act of this man.
97.1
And then this same man, so cruel, so heartless, who has taken such dire vengeance for his wrongs—you have only his word for them, for he really suffered none—will you acquit him when you have detected him in a wanton outrage on one of the citizens? If he regards neither festivals nor temples nor law nor anything else, will you not condemn him? Will you not make an example of him?
98.1
If not, what have you to say, gentlemen of the jury? What fair and honorable excuse, in heaven’s name, can you find for him? Is it because he is a ruffian and a blackguard? That is true enough, but surely, men of Athens, your duty is to hate such creatures, not to screen them. Is it because he is wealthy? But you will find that his wealth was the main cause of his insolence, so that your duty is to cut off the resources from which his insolence springs, rather than spare him for the sake of those resources; for to allow such a reckless and abominable creature to have such wealth at his command is to supply him with resources to use against yourselves.
99.1
What plea, then, is left? Pity, forsooth! He will group his children round him and weep and beg you to pardon him for their sakes. That is his last move. But I need not remind you that pity is the due of those who unjustly suffer more than they can endure, not of those who are paying the penalty for the misdeeds they have committed. And who could justly pity his children, when he sees that Meidias had no pity for Strato’s children, whose distress is enhanced by the reflection that for their father’s calamity no relief is possible? For it is not a question of paying a fixed fine and regaining his civil rights; he has been disfranchised absolutely, at one stroke, by the wanton resentment of Meidias.
100.1
Whose insolence then will be checked, and who will be deprived of the wealth that makes such outrages possible, if you are prepared to pity Meidias as though he were an innocent victim, while, if a poor man, who has done no wrong, has through him become unjustly involved in utmost ruin, you fail even to share in his indignation? It must not be. No one deserves pity who shows no pity; no one deserves pardon who grants no pardon.
101.1
For I think that all men, in all that they do, feel bound to make a contribution out of their own pockets for the benefit of their own life. Here am I, let us suppose; moderate and merciful towards all, and a benefactor of many. To such a man all men ought to make an equivalent return, if occasion offers or need demands. Here again is a very different man; violent, showing no pity to his neighbor, nor even treating him as a fellow-man. Such a man deserves to be paid in his own coin. And such, Meidias, was the contribution that you paid for your own benefit; such is the return that you deserve.
102.1
Therefore, men of Athens, I think that even if I had no other charge to bring against Meidias, and even if what I shall allege hereafter were not more serious than what I have already said, you would be justified, in view of my statements, in condemning him and imposing the utmost penalty of the law. Yet the tale is not complete, and I think I shall not be at a loss what to say next, so lavishly has he furnished me with matter for indictment.
103.1
How he trumped up a charge of desertion against me and bribed another to bring the action—a scoundrel ready for any dirty job, the filthy Euctemon—that I shall pass over; for that blackmailer never moved for a trial, nor had Meidias hired him for any other purpose than to have this notice posted up before the Tribal Heroes for all men to read, Euctemon of the Lusian deme has indicted Demosthenes of the Paeanian deme for desertion of his post. Indeed I think he would have been delighted, if it had been in order, to add that Meidias had hired him to indict me. But I pass that over, because Euctemon, having disfranchised himself by failing to follow up the charge, has given me all the satisfaction that I require.
104.1
But I will now relate a serious act of cruelty committed by him, men of Athens, which I at least regard as not merely a personal wrong but a public sacrilege. For when a grave criminal charge was hanging over that unlucky wretch, Aristarchus, the son of Moschus, at first, Athenians, Meidias went round the Market-place and ventured to spread impious and atrocious statements about me to the effect that I was the author of the deed; next, when this device failed, he went to the relations of the dead man, who were bringing the charge of murder against Aristarchus, and offered them money if they would accuse me of the crime. He let neither religion nor piety nor any other consideration stand in the way of this wild proposal: he shrank from nothing.
105.1
Nay, he was not ashamed to look even that audience in the face and bring such a terrible calamity upon an innocent man; but having set one goal before him, to ruin me by every means in his power, he thought himself bound to leave no stone unturned, as if it were only right that when any man, having been insulted by him, claimed redress and refused to keep silence, he should be removed by banishment without a chance of escape, should even find himself convicted of desertion, should defend himself on a capital charge, and should be in imminent danger of crucifixion. Yet when Meidias is proved guilty of all this, as well as of his insults when I was chorus-master, what leniency, what compassion shall he deserve at your hands?
106.1
My own opinion, men of Athens, is that these acts constitute him my murderer; that while at the Dionysia his outrages were confined to my equipment, my person, and my expenditure, his subsequent course of action shows that they were aimed at everything else that is mine, my citizenship, my family, my privileges, my hopes. Had a single one of his machinations succeeded, I should have been robbed of all that I had, even of the right to be buried in the homeland. What does this mean, gentlemen of the jury? It means that if treatment such as I have suffered is to be the fate of any man who tries to right himself when outraged by Meidias in defiance of all the laws, then it will be best for us, as is the way among barbarians, to grovel at the oppressor’s feet and make no attempt at self-defence.
107.1
However, to prove that my statements are true and that these things have actually been perpetrated by this shameless ruffian, please call the witnesses.
107.2
The Witnesses
107.3
We, Dionysius of Aphidna and Antiphilus of Paeania, when our kinsman Nicodemus had met with a violent death at the hands of Aristarchus, the son of Moschus, prosecuted Aristarchus for murder. Learning this, Meidias, who is now being brought to trial by Demosthenes, for whom we appear, offered us small sums of money to let Aristarchus go unharmed, and to substitute the name of Demosthenes in the indictment for murder.
107.4
Now let me have the law concerning bribery.
108.1
While the clerk is finding the statute, men of Athens, I wish to address a few words to you. I appeal to all of you jurymen, in the name of Zeus and all the gods, that whatever you hear in court, you may listen to it with this in your minds: What would one of you do, if he were the victim of this treatment, and what anger would he feel on his own account against the author of it? Seriously distressed as I was at the insults that I endured in the discharge of my public service, I am far more seriously distressed and indignant at what ensued.
109.1
For in truth, what bounds can be set to wickedness, and how can shamelessness, brutality and insolence go farther, if a man who has committed grave-yes, grave and repeated wrongs against another, instead of making amends and repenting of the evil, should afterwards add more serious outrages and should employ his riches, not to further his own interests without prejudice to others, but for the opposite purpose of driving his victim into exile unjustly and covering him with ignominy, while he gloats over his own superabundance of wealth?
110.1
All that, men of Athens, is just what has been done by Meidias. He brought against me a false charge of murder, in which, as the facts proved, I was in no way concerned; he indicted me for desertion, having himself on three occasions deserted his post; and as for the troubles in Euboea—why, I nearly forgot to mention them!-troubles for which his bosom-friend Plutarchus was responsible, he contrived to have the blame laid at my door, before it became plain to everyone that Plutarchus was at the bottom of the whole business.
111.1
Lastly, when I was made senator by lot, he denounced me at the scrutiny, and the business proved a very real danger for me; for instead of getting compensation for the injuries I had suffered, I was in danger of being punished for acts with which I had no concern. Having such grievances and being persecuted in the way that I have just described to you, but at the same time being neither quite friendless nor exactly a poor man, I am uncertain, men of Athens, what I ought to do.
112.1
For, if I may add a word on this subject also, where the rich are concerned, Athenians, the rest of us have no share in our just and equal rights. Indeed we have not. The rich can choose their own time for facing a jury, and their crimes are stale and cold when they are dished up before you, but if any of the rest of us is in trouble, he is brought into court while all is fresh. The rich have witnesses and counsel in readiness, all primed against us; but, as you see, my witnesses are some of them unwilling even to bear testimony to the truth.
113.1
One might harp on these grievances till one was weary, I suppose; but now recite in full the law which I began to quote. Read.
113.2
The Law
113.3
If any Athenian accepts a bribe from another, or himself offers it to another, or corrupts anyone by promises, to the detriment of the people in general, or of any individual citizen, by any means or device whatsoever, he shall be disfranchised together with his children, and his property shall be confiscated.
114.1
This man, then, is so impious, so abandoned, so ready to say or do anything, without stopping for a moment to ask whether it is true or false, whether it touches an enemy or a friend, or any such question, that after accusing me of murder and bringing that grave charge against me, he suffered me to conduct initiatory rites and sacrifices for the Council, and to inaugurate the victims on behalf of you and all the State;
115.1
he suffered me as head of the Sacred Embassy to lead it in the name of the city to the Nemean shrine of Zeus; he raised no objection when I was chosen with two colleagues to inaugurate the sacrifice to the Dread Goddesses. Would he have allowed all this, if he had had one jot or tittle of proof for the charges that he was trumping up against me? I cannot believe it. So then this is conclusive proof that he was seeking in mere wanton spite to drive me from my native land.
116.1
Then, when for all his desperate shifts he could bring none of these charges home to me, he turned informer against Aristarchus, aiming evidently at me. To pass over other incidents, when the Council was in session and was investigating the murder, Meidias came in and cried, Don’t you know the facts of the case, Councillors? Are you wasting time and groping blindly for the murderer, when you have him already in your hands?-meaning Aristarchus. Won’t you put him to death? Won’t you go to his house and arrest him?
117.1
Such was the language of this shameless and abandoned reptile, though only the day before he had stepped out of Aristarchus’s house, though up till then he had been as intimate with him as anyone could be, and though Aristarchus in the day of his prosperity had often importuned me to settle my suit with Meidias out of court. Now if he said this to the Council, believing that Aristarchus had actually committed the crime which has since proved his ruin, and trusting to the tale told by his accusers, yet even so the speech was unpardonable.
118.1
Upon friends, if they seem to have done something serious, one should impose the moderate penalty of withdrawing from their friendship; vengeance and prosecution should be left to their victims or their enemies. Yet in a man like Meidias this may be condoned. But if it shall appear that he chatted familiarly under the same roof with Aristarchus, as if he were perfectly innocent, and then uttered those damning charges against him in order to involve me in a false accusation, does he not deserve to be put to death ten times—no! ten thousand times over?
119.1
I am going to call the witnesses now present in court to prove that my version of the facts is correct; that on the day before he told that tale to the Council, he had entered Aristarchus’s house and had a conversation with him; that on the next day-and this, men of Athens, this for vileness is impossible to beat—he went into his house and sat as close to him as this, and put his hand in his, in the presence of many witnesses, after that speech in the Council in which he had called Aristarchus a murderer and said the most terrible things of him; that he invoked utter destruction on himself if he had said a word in his disparagement; that he never thought twice about his perjury, though there were people present who knew the truth, and he actually begged him to use his influence to bring about a reconciliation with me.
120.1
And yet, Athenians, must we not call it a crime, or rather an impiety, to say that a man is a murderer and then swear that one has never said this to reproach a man with murder and then sit in the same room with him? And if I let him off now and so stultify your vote of condemnation, I am an innocent man apparently; but if I proceed with my case, I am a deserter, I am accessory to a murder, I deserve extermination. I am quite of the contrary opinion, men of Athens. If I had let Meidias off, then I should have been a deserter from the cause of justice, and I might reasonably have charged myself with murder, for life would have been impossible for me, had I acted thus.
121.1
And now please call the witnesses to attest the truth of these statements also.
121.2
The Witnesses
121.3
We, Lysimachus of Alopece, Demeas of Sunium, Chares of Thoricus, Philemon of Sphetta, Moschus of Paeania, know that at the date when the indictment was presented to the Council charging Aristarchus, the son of Moschus, with the murder of Nicodemus, Meidias, who is now being tried at the suit of Demosthenes, for whom we appear, came before the Council and stated that Aristarchus, and no one else, was the murderer of Nicodemus, and he advised the Council to go to the house of Aristarchus and arrest him. This he said to the Council, having dined on the previous day with Aristarchus in our company. We also know that Meidias, when he came from the Council after making this statement, again entered the house of Aristarchus and shook hands with him and, invoking destruction on his own head, swore that he had said nothing in his disparagement before the Council, and he asked Aristarchus to reconcile Demosthenes to him.
122.1
Can anything go beyond that? Has there ever been, or could there ever be, baseness to compare with this of Meidias? He felt justified in informing against that unfortunate man, who had done him no wrong—I waive the fact that he was his friend—and at the same time he was begging him to bring about a reconciliation between himself and me; and not content with this, he spent money on an iniquitous attempt to procure my banishment as well as that of Aristarchus.
123.1
Yet this habit of his, Athenians, this scheme of involving in yet greater calamities all who stand up against him in just defence, is not something that might well rouse indignation and resentment in me, but that the rest of you should overlook. Far from it. All citizens alike should be stirred to anger, when they reflect and observe that it is exactly the poorest and weakest of you that run the greatest risk of being thus wantonly wronged, while it is the rich blackguards that find it easiest to oppress others and escape punishment, and even to hire agents to put obstacles in the path of justice.
124.1
Such conduct must not be overlooked. It must not be supposed that the man who by intimidation tries to debar any citizen from obtaining reparation for his wrongs is doing less than robbing us of our liberties and of our right of free speech. Perhaps I and one or two others may have managed to repel a false and calamitous charge and so have escaped destruction; but what will the vast majority of you do, if you do not by a public example make it a dangerous game for anyone to abuse his wealth for such a purpose?
125.1
When the accused man has rendered an account of his actions and has stood his trial on the charges brought against him, then he may retaliate upon unjust assailants; but even then he must not try to spirit away some witness of his ill deeds, nor to escape a trial by bringing false charges; he must not count it a grievance to submit to justice, but must avoid all outrageous conduct from the first.
126.1
Men of Athens, you have now heard how many outrages I endured, both in my own person and in the performance of my public service, and how many escapes I have had from plots and ill-treatment of every kind. Yet I have omitted much, for it was not easy perhaps to mention everything. But the case is this. By none of his acts was I alone wronged, but in the wrongs inflicted on the chorus my whole tribe, the tenth part of the citizens, shared; by his plots and attacks against me he wronged the laws, to which each of you looks for protection;lastly by all these acts he wronged the god to whose service I had been dedicated and that divine and awful power beyond our ken—the power of Holiness.
127.1
Those who would exact from him an adequate punishment for his misdeeds must not let their indignation be checked by the reflection that I alone am concerned, but must base the penalty on the ground that all alike are victims of the same wrong—the laws, the gods, the city of Athens; and they must look upon those who support him and are marshalled in his defence as something more than mere advocates, as men who set the seal of their approval to his acts.
128.1
Now if, men of Athens, Meidias had in other respects behaved with decency and moderation, if he had never injured any other citizen, but had confined his brutality and violence to me, I might, in the first place, consider this a piece of my own bad luck, and, in the second place, I should be afraid lest, by pointing to the moderation and humanity of the rest of his life, he might so evade punishment for his outrage on me.
129.1
But as it is, the wrongs that he has done to many of you are so many and so great that I am relieved of this apprehension; my fear is now, on the contrary, that when you hear of the terrible wrongs that others have suffered at his hands, some such argument as this may occur to you. What have you to complain of? Have you suffered more than each of his other victims? Now all that he has done, I could not relate to you, nor would you have the patience to listen, even if I were allowed for the rest of my speech all the time assigned to both of us: all my time and all his in addition would not suffice. I will confine myself to the most important and clearest examples.
130.1
Or rather, this is what I propose to do. I will read you all my memoranda, just as I wrote them out for my own use. I will take first whatever incident you would like to hear first; next your second choice, and so on, as long as you care to listen. There is no lack of variety; plenty of examples of assault, of kinsmen swindled, and of sacrilege. There is not a single passage where you will not find that he has committed many crimes worthy of death.
130.2
Memoranda of the Crimes of Meidias
131.1
That, gentlemen of the jury, is how he has treated everyone that comes across his path. I have omitted other instances, for no one could compress into a single narrative the violent acts that he has spent a lifetime in committing. But it is worth while noticing to what a height of audacity he has advanced in consequence of his never having been punished for any of these acts. He seems to have thought that no act that one man can commit against an individual was brilliant or dashing enough or worth risking his life for, and unless he could affront a whole tribe or the Council or some class of citizens and harass vast multitudes of you at once, he felt that life was really not worth living.
132.1
And as to other instances, innumerable as they are, I say nothing, but as regards the cavalry which was dispatched to Argura, and of which he was one, you all know of course how he harangued you on his return from Chalcis, blaming the troop and saying that its dispatch was a scandal to the city. In connection with that, you remember too the abuse that he heaped on Cratinus, who is, I understand, going to support him in the present case. Now if he provoked such serious but groundless quarrels with so many citizens at once, what degree of wickedness and recklessness may we expect from him now?
133.1
But I should like to ask you, Meidias, which was the greater scandal to the city—the men who crossed to Chalcis in due order, and with the equipment proper to those who were to take the field against the enemy and to join forces with our allies, or you, who, when lots were drawn for the expedition, prayed that you might draw a blank, who never donned your cuirass, who rode on a saddle with silver trappings, imported from Euboea, taking with you your shawls and goblets and wine-jars, which were confiscated by the customs? We of the infantry learned this by report, for we had not crossed at the same point as the cavalry.
134.1
And then, because Archetion or someone chaffed you on the subject, must you annoy them all? If you did what your fellow-troopers say you did, Meidias, and what you complain of them for saying, then you deserved their reproaches, because you were bringing harm and disgrace both on them and on these jurymen here and on all the city. But if you did not do it and it was all a fabrication, and if the rest of the soldiers, instead of reproving the slanderers, chuckled over you, it only shows that from your general manner of life they thought that such a story exactly fitted you. It was yourself, then, that you ought to have kept more under control, instead of accusing the others.
135.1
But you threaten all, you bully all. You insist that everyone else shall consult your wishes; you do not your self consult how to avoid annoying others. Yes, and what seems to me the most damning proof of your audacity is this: you come forward, you shameless ruffian, and include all these men in one sweeping accusation. Anyone else would have shuddered at the thought of doing such a thing.
136.1
I observe, gentlemen, that in all other trials the defendants are charged with one or two offences only, but they can rely on any number of appeals, such as these: Does anyone in court know me to be capable of this? Who among you has ever seen me commit these offences? No one. The plaintiffs are libelling me out of spite. I am the victim of false testimony, and so on. But with Meidias the case is just the reverse;
137.1
for I suppose you all know his way of life, his arrogance and his superciliousness, and I even suspect that some have long marvelled at things which they know themselves, but have not heard from my lips today. But I note that many of his victims are reluctant to disclose in evidence all that they have suffered, because they realize his violence and his persistence and the extent of those resources which make him so powerful and so dreaded, despicable though he is.
138.1
For a man whose wickedness and violence are supported by power and wealth is fortified against any sudden attack. So this fellow, if he were deprived of his property, would perhaps discontinue his outrages, or if not, he will be of less account in your courts than the most insignificant criminal; for then he will rail and bluster to deaf ears, and for any act of gross violence he will pay the penalty like the rest of us.
139.1
But now, I believe, his champions are Polyeuctus and Timocrates and the ragamuffin Euctemon. Such are the mercenaries that he keeps about him; and there are others besides, an organized gang of witnesses, who do not openly force themselves upon you, but readily give a silent nod of assent to his lies. I do not of course imagine that they make anything out of him, but there are some people, men of Athens, who are strangely prone to abase themselves towards the wealthy, to attend upon them, and to give witness in their favour.
140.1
All this, I expect, is alarming for the rest of you as individuals, depending each upon his own resources; and that is why you band yourselves together, so that when you find yourselves individually inferior to others, whether in wealth or in friends or in any other respect, you may together prove stronger than any one of your enemies and so check his insolence.
141.1
Now, some such ready plea as this will be submitted to you: Why did not So-and-so, who suffered this or that at my hands, try to obtain redress from me? Or why did not So-and-so?—naming perhaps another of his victims. But I expect you all know the stock excuses for shirking the duty of self-defence—want of leisure, a distaste for affairs, inability to speak, lack of means, and a thousand such reasons.
142.1
I do not, however, think that Meidias has any right to use such language now; his duty is to prove that he has not done what I have accused him of doing, and if he cannot, then he deserves death all the more. For if he is so powerful that he can act like this and yet prevent you individually from obtaining satisfaction from him, you ought all of you, in common and on behalf of all, now that he is in your grasp, to punish him as the common enemy of the State.
143.1
History tells us that Alcibiades lived at Athens in the good old days of her prosperity, and I want you to consider what great public services stand to his credit and how your ancestors dealt with him when he thought fit to behave like a ruffian and a bully. And assuredly it is not from any desire to compare Meidias with Alcibiades that I mention this story. I am not so foolish or infatuated. My object, men of Athens, is that you may know and feel that there is not, and never will be, anything—not birth, not wealth, not power—that you, the great mass of citizens, ought to tolerate, if it is coupled with insolence.
144.1
For Alcibiades, Athenians, was on his father’s side one of the Alcmaeonidae, who are said to have been banished by the tyrants because they belonged to the democratic faction, and who, with money borrowed from Delphi, liberated our city, expelling the sons of Peisistratus, and on his mother’s side he claimed descent from Hipponicus and that famous house to which the people are indebted for many eminent services.
145.1
But these were not his only claims, for he had also taken arms in the cause of democracy, twice in Samos and a third time in Athens itself, displaying his patriotism, not by gifts of money or by speeches, but by personal service. He had also to his credit for the Olympian chariot-race and victories there, and we are told that he was regarded as the best general and the ablest speaker of the day.
146.1
But yet your ancestors, for all these services, would not allow him to insult them. They made him a fugitive and an outlaw, and in the day of Lacedaemonian power they endured the fortification of Decelea, the capture of their fleet, and every kind of loss, because they deemed any involuntary suffering more honorable than a voluntary submission to the tyranny of insolence.
147.1
Yet what was his insolence compared with what has been proved of Meidias today? He boxed the ears of Taureas, when the latter was chorus-master. Granted; but it was as chorus-master to chorus-master that he did it, and he did not transgress the present law, for it had not yet been made. Another story is that he imprisoned the painter Agatharchus. Yes, but he had caught him in an act of trespass, or so we are told; so that it is unfair to blame him for that. He was one of the mutilators of the Hermae. All acts of sacrilege, I suppose, ought to excite the same indignation, but is not complete destruction of sacred things just as sacrilegious as their mutilation? Well, that is what Meidias has been convicted of.
148.1
To contrast the two men, let us ask who Meidias is and to whom he displayed his qualities. Do not then imagine that for you, gentlemen, being the descendants of such ancestors, it would be in accordance with justice or piety, to say nothing of honor, if, when you have caught a rascally, violent bully, a mere nobody and son of nobody, you should pronounce him deserving of pardon or pity or favour of any kind. For why should you? Because of his services as general? But not even as a private soldier, much less as a leader of others, is he worth anything at all. For his speeches then? In his public speeches he never yet said a good word of anyone, and he speaks ill of everyone in private.
149.1
For the sake of his family perhaps? And who of you does not know the mysterious story of his birth—quite like a melodrama? He was the sport of two opposing circumstances. The real mother who bore him was the most sensible of mortals; his reputed mother who adopted him was the silliest woman in the world. Do you ask why? The one sold him as soon as he was born; the other purchased him, when she might have got a better bargain at the same figure.
150.1
And yet, though he has thus become the possessor of privileges to which he has no claim, and has found a fatherland which is reputed to be of all states the most firmly based upon its laws, he seems utterly unable to submit to those laws or abide by them. His true, native barbarism and hatred of religion drive him on by force and betray the fact that he treats his present rights as if they were not his own—as indeed they are not.
151.1
Such, then, being the events that make up the life of this shameless blackguard, some of his associates came to me, gentlemen of the jury, urging me to retire and drop this action; but finding me unmoved, they did not venture to assert that he was innocent of all these crimes and would not deserve the severest penalty for his deeds. They took this line of argument. He has already been convicted and condemned; what fine do you expect the court to impose on him? Do you not see that he is a rich man and will talk about the equipment of war-galleys and other public services? Then take care that he does not beg himself off by such pleas, and make you his laughingstock, when he pays the State a far less sum than he now offers you.
152.1
For myself, in the first place, I do not charge you with anything dishonorable, nor do I suppose that you will lay on him a lighter punishment than will effectually check his insolence; and that means, for choice, death, or failing that, at least the confiscation of all his property. In the next place, my own opinion about his trierarchies and public services and pleas of that sort is this.
153.1
If, men of Athens, public service consists in saying to you at all the meetings of the Assembly and on every possible occasion, We are the men who perform the public services; we are those who advance your tax-money; we are the capitalists—if that is all it means, then I confess that Meidias has shown himself the most distinguished citizen of Athens; for he bores us at every Assembly by these tasteless and tactless boasts.
154.1
But if you want to find out how he really performs his services, I will tell you; and please mark with what fairness I shall test him, for I will compare him with myself. This man, Athenians, who is about fifty years old or only a trifle less, has not performed more public services than I, who am only two and thirty. Moreover I, as soon as I had reached man’s estate, undertook the trierarchy in the days when only two shared the duty, and when we paid all the expenses from our own purses and provided the crews ourselves.
155.1
Meidias, when he was of my present age, had not yet begun to perform services; he has only put his hand to the task since you made twelve hundred citizens joint contributors, from whom such men as Meidias exact a talent and then contract for the equipment of the war-galley at the same price. After this the State provides the crews and furnishes the tackle; so that some of them succeed in really spending nothing at all and by pretending to have performed one public service enjoy exemption from the rest.
156.1
Well, is there anything else? He has once equipped a tragic chorus; I have furnished a band of male flute-players; and everyone knows that the latter involves much greater expense than the former. Moreover my service is voluntary; his was only undertaken after a challenge to exchange property. Therefore no one could justly allow him any credit for it. What else? I have feasted my tribe and equipped a chorus for the Panathenaea; he has done neither.
157.1
I was chairman of one of the tax-syndicates for ten years, contributing the same share as Phormio, Lysitheides, Callaeschrus, and the richest citizens, not from my actual property, of which my guardians had robbed me, but from the estimated wealth which my father had left and which I was entitled to inherit when I had passed the scrutiny for citizenship. That is how I have borne myself towards you; but how has Meidias? To this day he has never been chairman of a syndicate, though no one has ever robbed him of any part of his inheritance and he has received from his father a large property.
158.1
In what, then, consist his splendor, his public services and his lordly expenditure? I cannot for the life of me see, unless one fixes one’s attention on these facts. He has built at Eleusis a mansion huge enough to overshadow his neighbors; he drives his wife to the Mysteries, or anywhere else that he wishes, with a pair of greys from Sicyon; he swaggers about the market-place with three or four henchmen in attendance, describing beakers and drinking-horns and cups loud enough for the passers-by to hear.
159.1
I do not see how the mass of Athenians are benefited by all the wealth that Meidias retains for private luxury and superfluous display; I do see that his insolence, fostered by his wealth, affects many of us ordinary folk. You ought not to show respect and admiration for such things on every occasion, nor judge a man’s public spirit by such tests as these—whether he builds himself a splendid house or keeps many maid-servants or handsome furniture, but whether his splendor and public spirit are displayed in those things in which the majority of you can share. There you will find Meidias absolutely wanting.
160.1
But, mark you, he gave us a war-galley! I am sure he will brag about that vessel. I, he will say, presented you with a trireme. Now this is how you must deal with him. If, men of Athens, he gave it from patriotic motives, be duly grateful and pay him the thanks that such a gift deserves. But do not give him a chance to air his insolence; that must not be conceded as the price of any act or deed. If, on the other hand, it is proved that his motive was cowardice and malingering, do not be led astray. How then will you know? This too I will explain. I will tell you the story from the start: it is not a long one.
161.1
Voluntary gifts were first introduced at Athens for the expedition to Euboea. Meidias was not one of those volunteers, but I was, and my colleague was Philinus, the son of Nicostratus. There was a second call subsequently for Olynthus. Meidias was not one of those volunteers either. Yet surely the public-spirited man ought to be found at his post on every occasion. We have now these voluntary gifts for the third time, and this time he did make an offer. But how? Though present in the Council when the gifts were being received, he made no offer then.
162.1
But when it was announced that the troops at Tamynae were blockaded, and when the Council carried a preliminary decree to dispatch the rest of the cavalry, to which he belonged, then, alarmed at the prospect of this campaign, he came forward with a voluntary gift at the next meeting of the Assembly, even before the Committee could take their seats. What makes it clear, beyond all possibility of doubt, that his motive was not public spirit but the desire to shirk the campaign? His subsequent proceedings.
163.1
For in the first place, when it appeared, as the meeting proceeded and speeches were made, that the services of the cavalry were not now required, but that the proposed expedition had fallen through, he never set foot on the ship he had presented, but dispatched a resident alien, the Egyptian Pamphilus, while he himself stayed at home and behaved at the Dionysia in the way that is the matter of the present trial.
164.1
Next, when the general, Phocion, summoned the cavalry from Argura to take their turn of service, and the trickery of Meidias was exposed, then this damnable coward quitted that post and hurried to his ship and never went out with the cavalry whom he claimed to command here at home. But if there had been any risk at sea, he would certainly have hastened to land.
165.1
Not so behaved Niceratus, the beloved son of Nicias, though he was himself physically an utter weakling. Not so behaved Euctemon, the son of Aesion, nor Euthydemus, the son of Stratocles. Each of these men had made the gift of a war-galley, yet did not run away from the campaign in this way. Each, as an act of grace and a free gift, supplied the State with a ship ready for sea, and where the law of the State assigned them their posts, there each insisted on giving his personal service.
166.1
But not so our cavalry-officer Meidias. He deserted the post assigned him by the laws, and this, which is a punishable offence against the State, he is prepared to count as a meritorious service. Yet, good heavens! what name best befits such a trierarchy as his? Shall we call it patriotism, or tax-jobbing, two-per-cent-collecting, desertion, malingering, and everything of that sort? Unable in any other way to get himself exempt from service with the cavalry, Meidias has invented this new-fangled cavalry-collectorship. Another point.
167.1
All the other donors of war-galleys convoyed you when you sailed back from Styra; Meidias alone took no part in the convoy, but, without a thought for you, he was bringing fences and cattle and door-posts for his own house and pit-props for his silver-mines, and so his command has proved, not a public service, but a lucrative job for this detestable creature. However, to prove to you the truth of my statements, though most of the facts are known to you, I will nevertheless call witnesses.
167.2
The Witnesses
168.1
We, Cleon of Sunium, Aristocles of Paeania, Pamphilus, Niceratus of Acherdus, and Euctemon of Sphetta, on the occasion when we sailed home from Styra with the entire force, were commanders of triremes along with Meidias, who is now being prosecuted by Demosthenes, for whom we appear as witnesses. When the whole fleet was sailing in formation and the commanders had instructions not to separate until we landed at Athens, Meidias lagged behind the fleet and loaded his ship with timber and fencing and cattle and other things, and sailed alone into Peiraeus two days later, and did not join with the other commanders in bringing the force to land.
169.1
Now if, men of Athens, his public services and his conduct were really what he will presently in court allege and boast them to have been and not what I thus prove them to have been, even so surely he has no right, under cover of his services, to escape the punishment due to his insolent acts. For I know that there are many men who have done you great and useful service—though not after the style of Meidias! Some have won naval victories, others have captured cities, others have set up many glorious trophies to the credit of the State.
170.1
But yet to not one of these men have you ever yet granted, nor are you likely to grant, this reward—licence for each one of them to oppress his private enemies whenever he likes and in whatever way he can. For not even Harmodius and Aristogeiton were so privileged, though indeed they received from you the highest rewards for the noblest services. You would never have tolerated it if any one had added this to the inscription on their monument, And they shall be licensed to oppress whomsoever they will. No, they received their other rewards for this very service, that they had restrained those who acted insolently.
171.1
I now propose to show you, Athenians, that he has received from you a recompense adequate not only to the public services he has actually performed—for in that case it would be small indeed!—but even to the most distinguished services; so that you may not imagine that you are still in debt to this contemptible fellow. For it was you, men of Athens, who elected him—he being what he is—steward of the Paralus, and also commander of the cavalry, though he could not sit a horse in the processions through the market-place, and superintendent of the Mysteries, and sacrificer on one occasion, and buyer of the victims and all the rest of it.
172.1
And then, that a man’s innate baseness and cowardice and wickedness should be redeemed by offices and honors and appointments from you—do you, in heaven’s name, regard that as a trivial gift and favour? Take away, indeed, his right to say, I have been commander of the cavalry; I have been made steward of the Paralus, and what else is he good for?
173.1
But at any rate you know this, that when he had been made steward of the Paralus, he plundered the people of Cyzicus of more than five talents, and to avoid punishment he worried and harassed the wretches in every possible way, and by making chaos of the treaties he has alienated their state from ours, while he keeps the money himself. Since he was appointed its commander, he has ruined your cavalry force, getting laws passed which he afterwards disowned.
174.1
When he was steward of the Paralus at the time of your expedition to Euboea against the Thebans, though he was authorized to expend twelve talents of public money and was instructed by you to sail and convoy the troops, he rendered them no assistance and did not arrive until Diocles had already concluded his truce with the Thebans; moreover he was outstripped by one of the privately owned galleys. That shows you how well he had equipped your sacred galley. Then as cavalry-commander-I do not know what you think of his other performances, but this wealthy fine gentleman did not venture to buy a horse—not even a horse! He led the processions on one borrowed from Philomelus of Paeania, and every cavalryman knows it. Please call the witnesses to prove the truth of these statements also.

Perseus Greek. CTS URN tlg0014.tlg021.perseus-eng2. Via the Perseus Digital Library / Open Greek and Latin TEI corpora. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0. Source.