[25]
The legislator, while he presumes the killing, has nevertheless directed a
judicial inquiry before specifying what is to be done to the culprit, and
thereby has shown a just respect, men of Athens, for the religious feeling of the whole city. I say of
the whole city, because it is impossible that all of you should know who the
manslayer is. He thought it scandalous to give credit to such accusations, when
made, without a trial; and he conceived that, inasmuch as the avenging of the
sufferer is in our hands, we ought to be informed and satisfied by argument that
the accused is guilty, for then conscience permits us to inflict punishment
according to knowledge, but not before.
Demosthenes. Demosthenes with an English translation by A. T. Murray, Ph.D., LL.D. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1939.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
Purchase a copy of this text (not necessarily the same edition) from Amazon.com
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.