[60]
Convince the
jury now, Demosthenes, that any of those crimes ranks with yours and that to
take bribes against one's country is a pardonable act which would justify these
men in acquitting you. For other pecuniary offences the laws prescribe damages
twice as great as the sum involved,1 but in cases of bribery they have laid down two
penalties only: either death, to ensure that by meeting with this punishment the
guilty man is an example to others, or a fine for bribery ten times as great as
the original bribe, so that men who dare to commit this offence shall not gain
by it.
1 A misleading statement. Cf. Hyp. 5 col. 24, where the contrast made is between a simple and a tenfold fine. A fine was doubled only if it had not been paid before a specific date. Cf. Din. 2.17 and Aristot. Const. Ath. 54.
Dinarchus. Minor Attic Orators in two volumes, 2, with an English translation by J. O. Burtt, M.A. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1962.
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.