[27]
I am sure that the
character of the defendant and his manner of life will not lead you to believe
that the depositions which have been read are false. On the contrary, his
character far more convincingly than the words which have been spoken proves
Theocrines to be such as I portray him. For what is there that a scoundrel and a
pettifogger would do that he has not done? Was it not because of his evil
character that his brother, who held the office of judge1 and who was guided by the
defendant's advice, was brought into such bad repute with you, that, when you
voted on the question of retaining the magistrates,2 he was not only
himself rejected, but caused the rejection of the entire board? And had it not
been that through the prayers and entreaties of his fellow-judges and through
their promise that Theocrines should never again come near the board you were
persuaded to give them back their crowns,3 would they
not have incurred the deepest possible disgrace?
1 That is, one of the Themosthetae; see note a on Dem. 33.1
2 This was done at the first assembly in each prytany, or ten times a year. （For the prytany see note a on Dem. 47.42）
3 The ten archons wore crowns as a badge of their inviolability.
Demosthenes. Demosthenes with an English translation by Norman W. DeWitt, Ph.D., and Norman J. DeWitt, Ph.D. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1949.
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.