[147]
Yet what was his insolence
compared with what has been proved of Meidias today? He boxed the ears of
Taureas, when the latter was chorus-master. Granted; but it was as chorus-master
to chorus-master that he did it, and he did not transgress the present law, for
it had not yet been made. Another story is that he imprisoned the painter
Agatharchus. Yes, but he had caught him in an act of trespass, or so we are
told; so that it is unfair to blame him for that. He was one of the mutilators
of the Hermae. All acts of sacrilege, I suppose, ought to excite the same
indignation, but is not complete destruction of sacred things just as
sacrilegious as their mutilation? Well, that is what Meidias has been convicted
of.
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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