Against Meidias

Perseus Greek · Perseus Greek · 255 sections

174.2
The Witnesses
175.1
Now I propose, men of Athens, to name those who have been condemned by you, after an adverse vote of the Assembly, for violating the festival, and to explain what some of them had done to incur your anger, so that you may compare their guilt with that of Meidias. First of all then, to begin with the most recent condemnation, the Assembly gave its verdict against Euandrus of Thespiae for profanation of the Mysteries on the charge of Menippus, a fellow from Caria. The law concerning the Mysteries is identical with that concerning the Dionysia, and it was enacted later.
176.1
Well, Athenians, what had Euandrus done to deserve your condemnation? He had won a commercial suit against Menippus, but being, as he alleged, unable to catch him sooner, he had arrested him while he was staying here for the Mysteries. You condemned him for that alone, and there were no aggravating circumstances. When he came before the court, you were inclined to punish him with death, and when his accuser was induced to relent, you compelled Euandrus to refund the damages, amounting to two talents, which he had won in the former action, and you also made him compensate the fellow for the loss that he had sustained, on his own calculation, by staying here in deference to your preliminary verdict.
177.1
There you have one case of a man, in a merely private matter, with no added circumstances of insolence, paying so heavy a penalty for a breach of the law. With good reason; because that is what you are here to guard—the laws and your oath. That is what you who serve on any jury hold as a trust from the rest of the citizens, a trust which must be maintained inviolate in the interests of all who appeal to you with justice on their side.
178.1
There was another man who in your opinion had profaned the Dionysia, and although he was actually sitting as assessor to his son, who was Archon, you condemned him, because in ejecting from the theater a man who was taking a wrong seat, he laid a hand on him. That man was the father of the highly respected Charicleides, at that time archon.
179.1
Yes, and you thought that his accuser had a strong case when he said, If I was taking a wrong seat, fellow, if as you assert I was disregarding the notices, what authority do the laws confer on you or even on the archon himself? The authority to bid the attendants remove me, but not to strike me yourself. If I still refuse to go, you may impose a fine; anything rather than touch me with your own hand; for the laws have taken every precaution to save a citizen from being insulted in his own person. That was his argument. You gave your votes, but the accuser died before he could bring the case before a jury.
180.1
Then another man, Ctesicles, was unanimously condemned by the Assembly for profaning the festival, and when he came before you, you sentenced him to death, because he carried a leathern lash in the procession and, being drunk, struck with it a personal enemy of his. It was thought that insolence, not drink, prompted the stroke, and that he seized the excuse of the procession and his own drunkenness to commit the offence of treating freemen like slaves.
181.1
Now I am certain, men of Athens, that everyone would admit that the offences of Meidias were much more serious than those of any of these men, of whom one, as I have shown, forfeited the damages he had already received, while the other was actually punished with death. For Meidias, not being in a procession, not having won a suit, not acting as assessor, having in fact no other motive than insolence, behaved worse than any of them. About them I will say no more;
182.1
but Pyrrhus, men of Athens, one of the Eteobutadae, who was indicted for serving on a jury when he was in debt to the Treasury, was thought by some of you to deserve capital punishment, and he was convicted in your court and put to death. And yet it was from poverty, not from insolence, that he tried to get the juryman’s fee. And I could mention many others who were put to death or disfranchised for far slighter offences than those of Meidias. You yourselves, Athenians, fined Smicrus ten talents and Sciton a similar sum, because he was adjudged to be proposing unconstitutional measures; you had no pity for their children or friends and relations, or for any of those who supported them in court.
183.1
Do not, then, display such anger when people make unconstitutional proposals, and such indulgence when not their proposals, but their acts are unconstitutional. For no mere words and terms can be so galling to the great mass of you as the conduct of a man who persistently insults any citizen who crosses his path. Beware, Athenians, of bearing this testimony against yourselves, that if you detect a man of the middle class or a friend of the people committing an offence, you will neither pity nor reprieve him, but will punish him with death or disfranchisement, while you are ready to pardon the insolence of a rich man. Spare us that injustice, and show your indignation impartially against all offenders.
184.1
There are some other points that I consider no less necessary to mention than those which I have already put before you. I will mention them and discuss them briefly before I sit down. The leniency of your disposition, men of Athens, is a great asset and advantage to all wrongdoers. Give me, then, your attention while I show that you have no right to admit Meidias to the least share in that advantage. My view is that all men during their lives pay contributions to their own fortunes, not only those which are actually collected and paid in, but others also.
185.1
For instance, one of us is moderate, kindly disposed and merciful: he deserves to receive an equivalent return from all, if he ever falls into want or distress. Yonder is another, who is shameless and insulting, treating others as if they were beggars, the scum of the earth, mere nobodies: he deserves to be paid with the same measure that he has meted to others. If you will consent to look at it in a true light, you will find that this, and not the former, is the kind of contribution that Meidias has made.
186.1
Now I know that he will set up a wail, with his children grouped about him, and will make a long and humble appeal, weeping and making himself as pitiable a figure as he can. But the more he humiliates himself, Athenians, the more he deserves your hatred. Why so? If in his past life he was so brutal and violent because it was impossible for him to be humble, it would be right to abate some of your anger as a concession to his natural temper and to the destiny that made him the man he is; but if he knows how to behave discreetly when he likes, but has deliberately chosen the opposite line of conduct, it is surely obvious that, if he slips through your fingers now, he will once more prove himself the man you know so well.
187.1
Pay no attention to him; do not let the present crisis in his affairs, expressly invented by him, carry more weight and influence with you than the whole course of his life, of which you have direct knowledge. I have no children to pose before you, while I weep and wail over them for the insults I have received. For that reason shall I, the victim, be of less account in your court than the perpetrator of the wrong? It must not be.
188.1
When Meidias, with his children round him, calls you to cast your votes for them, then you must imagine that I am standing here with the laws by my side and the oath that you have sworn, demanding and imploring each of you to vote for them. It is in every way more just that you should side with the laws than with this man. The laws, Athenians, you have sworn to obey; through the laws you enjoy your equal rights; to the laws you owe every blessing that is yours—not to Meidias nor to the children of Meidias.
189.1
Perhaps he will say of me, This man is an orator. If an orator is one who offers you such counsel as he thinks expedient for you, yet stops short of pestering or bullying you, then for my part I would neither shun nor disclaim that title. But if by orator he means one of those speakers such as you and I so often see, men who have shamelessly enriched themselves at your expense, I cannot be one, for I have never received a penny from you and I have spent upon you all but a trifle of my fortune. Yet even if I were the most unscrupulous of that gang, I ought rather to be punished according to the laws than insulted in the performance of a public service.
190.1
Then again, none of these orators supports me in this trial; nor do I blame them, for I have never said a word in public in support of one of them. I make it a fixed rule to take my own line, speaking and acting in whatever way I believe to be for your advantage. But you will see very soon that Meidias has all the orators in turn ranged on his side. Yet is it fair in him to brand me with the reproach of that title and then to depend on these very men to rescue him?
191.1
Perhaps too he will say something of this sort; that my present speech is all carefully thought out and prepared. I admit, Athenians, that I have thought it out, and I should not dream of denying it; yes, and I have spent all possible care on it. I should be a poor creature if all my wrongs, past and present, left me careless of what I was going to say to you about them. Yet the real composer of my speech is Meidias.
192.1
The man who has furnished the facts with which the speeches deal ought in strict justice to bear that responsibility, and not the man who has devoted thought and care to lay an honest case before you today. That is what I am doing, men of Athens; to that I plead guilty. As for Meidias, he has probably never in his life troubled himself about honesty, for if it had entered his head even for a moment to consider such a thing, he would not have missed it so completely in practice.
193.1
Again, I expect that he will not shrink from vilifying the people and the Assembly, but will repeat what he had the effrontery to say when the plaint was first brought in: that the meeting was composed of men who had stayed at home when they ought to have gone to the front and who had left their posts unguarded, and that he was condemned by the votes of chorus-men and aliens and the like.
194.1
As those of you who were present know, gentlemen, he had risen on that occasion to such a height of bravado and impudence that, by abusing and threatening and turning his glance to any quarter of the Assembly that was inclined to be obstreperous, he thought he could browbeat the whole body of citizens. That, I think, must surely make his tears today seem ridiculous. Execrable wretch, what have you to say?
195.1
Will you claim pity for your children and yourself or a kindly interest in your fortunes from these men whom you have already insulted publicly? Are you alone of living men privileged to be in your daily life so notoriously possessed of the demon of arrogance that even those who have no dealings with you are exasperated by your assurance, your tones and gestures, your parasites, your wealth and your insolence; and then, the instant you are put on your trial are you to be pitied?
196.1
It would be indeed a great method that you have devised, or, rather, a great trick, if you could in so short a time make yourself the object of two contradictory sentiments, rousing resentment by your way of life and compassion by your mummeries. You have no conceivable claim to compassion; no, not for an instant. On the contrary, hatred, resentment and wrath—those are what your conduct calls for. But let me come back to my point, that he intends to arraign the people and the Assembly.
197.1
Now when he does so, just reflect, gentlemen of the jury, that this same man brought accusations against the cavalry who had served with him, coming into the Assembly after they had sailed for Olynthus; and now once more, having stayed at home, he will address his denunciation of the people to the men who were then away on service. Are you, then, prepared to admit that you, whether at home or on service, are what Meidias proclaims you to be, or on the contrary that he is, and always has been, an unhallowed ruffian? That is my own opinion of him; for how else are we to describe a creature whom his own troopers, his brother-officers and his friends cannot stomach?
198.1
I swear solemnly by Zeus, by Apollo, and by Athena—for I will speak out, whatever the result may be—for when this man was going about, trumping up the story that I had abandoned the prosecution, I observed signs of disgust even among his ardent supporters. And by heaven! they had some excuse, for there is no putting up with the fellow; he claims to be the only rich man and the only man who knows how to speak; all others are in his opinion outcasts, beggars, below the rank of men.
199.1
Since he stands on such an eminence of pride, what do you think he will do, if he escapes now? I will tell you how you may know it; you have only to observe the signs that followed the adverse vote. For who is there that, if an adverse vote had been recorded, and that on a charge of profaning the feast, even if there had been no further suit pending and no danger ahead,—who is there, I say, that would not have made that a reason for effacing himself and behaving decently, at any rate until the time of the trial, if not for ever after? Anyone else would have acted so. But not Meidias.
200.1
From that day onwards he has been talking, railing, and bellowing. Is there an election on? Meidias of Anagyrus is a candidate. He is the accredited agent of Plutarchus; he knows all the secrets; the city cannot hold him. His object in all this is obvious;he wants to proclaim that I am not a pin the worse for the vote of the people: I have no fears or misgivings about the pending action.
201.1
Now a man who thinks it degrading to show any fear of you, Athenians, and a dashing thing to snap his fingers at you, does not such a man deserve death ten times over? He really believes that you will have no hold over him. Rich, arrogant, haughty, loud-voiced, violent, shameless, where will you catch him if he gives you the slip now?
202.1
But in my opinion, if for nothing else, yet for those harangues that he delivers at every opportunity and for the occasions that he chooses for them, he would deserve the severest penalty. For of course you know that if any welcome news is brought to the city, such as we all rejoice to hear, Meidias has never on any of those occasions been found in the ranks of those who share in the public satisfaction or the public rejoicings;
203.1
but if it is something untoward, something that no one else would wish to hear, he is the first to jump up at once and harangue the people, making the utmost of his opportunity and enjoying the silence by which you show your distress at what has happened. Why, that is the sort of men you Athenians are. You do not serve abroad; you see no need to pay your property-tax. And then do you wonder that your affairs go wrong? Do you think I am going to pay my property-tax and you spend the money? Do you think I am going to fit out war-galleys and you decline to embark in them?
204.1
That is how he insults you, seizing the chance to void the rancor and venom that he secretes in his heart against the masses, as he moves about among you. Now is the chance for you, men of Athens, now when he comes with his humbug and chicanery, with his lamentations, tears and prayers, to throw this answer in his teeth. Yes, and that is the sort of man you are, Meidias. You are a bully; you cannot keep your hands to yourself. Then can you wonder if your evil deeds bring you to an evil end? Do you think that we shall submit to you and you shall go on beating us? That we shall acquit you and you shall never desist?
205.1
As for the speakers who will support him, their object, I swear, is not so much to oblige him as to insult me, owing to the personal quarrel which that man there says that I have with himself. He insists that it is so, whether I admit it or not; but he is wrong. Too much success is apt sometimes to make people overbearing. For when I, after all that I have suffered, do not admit that he is my enemy, while he will not accept my disclaimer, but even confronts me in another’s quarrel, and is prepared now to mount the platform and demand that I shall even forfeit my claim to that protection which the laws afford to all, is it not clear that he has grown overbearing and is too powerful to suit the interests of each one of us?
206.1
Furthermore, Athenians, Eubulus was in his seat in the theater when the people gave their vote against Meidias, and yet, as you know, he never stood up when called upon by name, though Meidias begged and implored him to do so. Yet if he thought that the plaint had been brought against an innocent man, that was the moment to help him by his testimony, if he was really his friend;but if he withheld his support then, because he had pronounced him guilty, but is now going to ask for his acquittal, because he has fallen foul of me, it is not well that you should humor him.
207.1
In a democracy there must never be a citizen so powerful that his support can ensure that the one party submits to outrages and the other escapes punishment. But if you are anxious to do me an ill turn, Eubulus,though I protest that I know not why you should—you are a man of influence and a statesman; take any legal vengeance you like on me, but do not deprive me of my compensation for illegal outrages. If you find it impossible to harm me in that way, it may be taken as a proof of my innocence that you can readily censure others, but find no ground of censure in me.
208.1
Now I have learned that Philippides and Mnesarchides and Diotimus of Euonymia and some other rich trierarchs will plead with you for his acquittal, claiming it as a favour due to themselves. I would not utter a word in disparagement of these men; I should indeed be mad to do so: but I will tell you how you ought to reflect and consider, when they make their request.
209.1
Suppose, gentlemen of the jury, that these men—never may it so befall, as indeed it never will—made themselves masters of the State, along with Meidias and others like him; and suppose that one of you, who are men of the people and friends to popular government, having offended one of these men,—not so seriously as Meidias offended me, but in some slighter degree—came before a jury packed with men of that class; what pardon, what consideration do you think he would receive? They would be prompt with their favour, would they not? Would they heed the petition of one of the common folk? Would not their first words be, The knave! The sorry rascal! To think that he should insult us and still draw breath! He ought to be only too happy if he is permitted to exist?
210.1
Do not therefore, men of Athens, treat them otherwise than as they would treat you. Keep your respect, not for their wealth or their reputation, but for yourselves. They have many advantages, which no one hinders them from enjoying; then they in their turn must not hinder us from enjoying the security which the laws provide as our common birthright.
211.1
Meidias will suffer no distressing hardship if he shall come to possess just as much as the majority of you, whom he now insults and calls beggars, and if he is stripped of the superfluous wealth that incites him to such insolence. Surely such men have no right to ask of you, Do not try the case by the laws, gentlemen of the jury; do not help the man who has suffered serious wrongs; do not observe your oaths; grant us your verdict as a favour. If they plead for Meidias, that is what their plea will come to, though these may not be their actual words.
212.1
But if they are his friends and think it hard that he should not be rich, well, they are extremely rich themselves; that is their good fortune. Let them spare him some of their own wealth, that you may give your votes honestly, as you swore to do when you came into court, and that they may be generous to him at their own expense, and not at the expense of your honor. But if these men with all their money are not prepared to sacrifice it, how can it be honorable for you to sacrifice your oath?
213.1
An imposing muster of wealthy men, whose prosperity has raised them to apparent importance, will come into court to plead with you. Men of Athens, do not sacrifice me to any one of them; but just as each of them will be zealous for his private interests and for the defendant, so be zealous for your own selves and for the laws, as well as for me who have fled to you for refuge, and cleave to the opinion that you already hold.
214.1
If, men of Athens, at the time of the plaint the people, after hearing the facts, had acquitted Meidias, it would not be so hard to bear: one might console oneself with the fancy that the assault had never been made, or that it was not a profanation of the festival, and so on.
215.1
But now this would be the hardest blow for me to bear, if, when the offences were fresh in your memory, you displayed such anger and indignation and bitterness that, when Neoptolemus and Mnesarchides and Philippides and another of these very wealthy men were interceding with you and me, you shouted to me not to let him off, and when Blepaeus the banker came up to me, you raised such an uproar, as if I was going to take a bribe—the old, old story!—
216.1
that I was startled by your clamor, Athenians, and let my cloak drop so that I was half-naked in my tunic, trying to get away from his grasp, and when you met me afterwards, Mind you prosecute the blackguard, you cried; don’t let him go; the Athenians will watch to see what you are going to do; and yet when the act has been condemned by vote as an outrage, and those who gave that verdict were sitting in a sacred building, and when I have stuck to my task and not betrayed either you or myself, if after all this you are going to acquit him.
217.1
Never! Such a result entails all that is most disgraceful. I do not deserve this at your hands, Athenians. How should I, when I am bringing to justice a fellow who is as violent a bully as he is reputed to be, who has offended against decency at a public festival, and who has made not only you, but all the Greeks who were visiting the city, witnesses of his brutality? The people heard what he had done. What was the result? They voted him guilty and passed him on to your court.
218.1
So it is impossible that your decision should be concealed or hushed up, or that the question should not be asked, How did you judge the case when it was brought before you? No; if you punish him, you will be thought men of discretion and honor and haters of iniquity; but if you acquit him, you will seem to have capitulated to some other motive. For this is not a political issue, nor does it resemble the case of Aristophon, who stopped the plaint against him by restoring the crowns. This case arises from the insolence of Meidias and from the impossibility of his undoing any of his acts. Is it then better, in view of the past, to punish him now or the next time he offends? Now is the time, I think, because the trial is a public one, even as the offences for which he is being tried were public.
219.1
Furthermore, it was not I alone, men of Athens, that he then, in his intention, struck and insulted, when he acted as he did, but all who may be supposed less able than I am to obtain satisfaction for themselves. If you were not all beaten, if you were not all insulted while acting as choir-masters, you realize of course that you cannot all be choir-masters at the same time, and that no one could possibly assault all of you at once with a single fist.
220.1
But whenever a solitary victim fails to obtain redress, then each one of you must expect to be the next victim himself, and must not be indifferent to such incidents nor wait for them to come his way, but must rather guard against them as long beforehand as possible. I perhaps am hated by Meidias, and each of you by someone else. Would you, then, allow that enemy, whoever he is, to gain the power of doing to each of you what this man has done to me? I should think not indeed. Then neither must you leave me, Athenians, in this man’s power.
221.1
Just think. The instant this court rises, each of you will walk home, one quicker, another more leisurely, not anxious, not glancing behind him, not fearing whether he is going to run up against a friend or an enemy, a big man or a little one, a strong man or a weak one, or anything of that sort. And why? Because in his heart he knows, and is confident, and has learned to trust the State, that no one shall seize or insult or strike him.
222.1
That sense of security, then, with which you walk the streets—will you not guarantee it to me before you set off home? How can I reasonably expect to survive after what I have suffered, if you leave me in the lurch? Perhaps someone will say, Take heart! You will not be insulted again. But if I am, will you be angry with him then, after acquitting him now? Do not, gentlemen of the jury, do not betray me or yourselves or the laws.
223.1
For if you would only examine and consider the question, what it is that gives you who serve on juries such power and authority in all state-affairs, whether the State empanels two hundred of you or a thousand or any other number, you would find that it is not that you alone of the citizens are drawn up under arms, not that your physical powers are at their best and strongest, not that you are in the earliest prime of manhood; it is due to no cause of that sort but simply to the strength of the laws.
224.1
And what is the strength of the laws? If one of you is wronged and cries aloud, will the laws run up and be at his side to assist him? No; they are only written texts and incapable of such action. Wherein then resides their power? In yourselves, if only you support them and make them all-powerful to help him who needs them. So the laws are strong through you and you through the laws.
225.1
Therefore you must help them as readily as any man would help himself if wronged; you must consider that you share in the wrongs done to the laws, by whomsoever they are found to be committed; and no excuse—neither public services, nor pity, nor personal influence, nor forensic skill, nor anything else—must be devised whereby anyone who has transgressed the laws shall escape punishment.
226.1
Those of you who were spectators at the Dionysia hissed and hooted Meidias when he entered the theater; you gave every indication of your abhorrence, though you had not yet heard what I had to say about him. Were you so indignant before the case was investigated, that you urged me to demand vengeance for my wrongs and applauded me when I brought my plaint before the Assembly?
227.1
And yet now, when his guilt has been established, when the people, sitting in a sacred building, have anticipated his condemnation, when all the other crimes of this miscreant have been sifted, when it has fallen to your lot to be his judges and it lies in your power to conclude the whole affair by a single vote—now, I say, will you hesitate to succor me, to gratify the people, to give all a lesson in sobriety, and to enjoy perfect safety for the rest of your lives, by making an example of the defendant for the instruction of others?
227.2
Therefore for all the reasons that I have urged, and above all for the honor of the god whose festival he has been convicted of profaning, punish this man by casting the vote which piety and justice alike demand.

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