[99]
What plea, then, is
left? Pity, forsooth! He will group his children round him and weep and beg you
to pardon him for their sakes. That is his last move. [But I need not
remind you that pity is the due of those who unjustly suffer more than they can
endure, not of those who are paying the penalty for the misdeeds they have
committed.] And who could justly pity his children, when he sees that
Meidias had no pity for Strato's
children, whose distress is enhanced by the reflection that for their father's
calamity no relief is possible? For it is not a question of paying a fixed fine
and regaining his civil rights; he has been disfranchised absolutely, at one
stroke, by the wanton resentment of Meidias.
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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