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[106]
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.
Demosthenes. Demosthenes with an English translation by A. T. Murray, Ph.D., LL.D. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1939.
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