This text is part of:
[89]
You see, men of
Athens, that they have all drawn
them in the same fashion. For instance: “There shall be the same
redress for him as if the person slain were an Athenian.” Here,
without tampering with your existing laws respecting such offences, they enhance
the dignity of those laws by making it an act of grace to allow a share in them
to others. Not so Aristocrates: he does his very best to drag the laws through
the mire; anyhow, he tried to compose something of his own, as though they were
worth nothing; and he makes light even of that act of grace which you bestowed
your citizenship upon Charidemus. For when he assumes that you still owe the man
a debt of gratitude, and has proposed that you should protect him into the
bargain, so that he may do just what he likes with impunity, does not such
conduct merit my description?
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.