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[104] Again, there is another excellent law of Solon, forbidding a man to speak ill of the dead, even if he is himself defamed by the dead man's children. You do not speak ill of our departed benefactors, Leptines; you do ill to them, when you blame one1 and assert that another is unworthy, though these charges have nothing to do with the dead men.2 Are you not very far from the intention of Solon?

1 i.e. of their descendants, whose demerits are no justification for cancelling a reward once given. But the Greek is not clear.

2 Or possibly, if ὦν is masculine, "though the men thus charged have no connection with the dead."

Demosthenes. Demosthenes with an English translation by C. A. Vince, M. A. and J. H. Vince, M.A. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1926.

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    • F. A. Paley, Select Private Orations of Demosthenes, 49
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