[117]
It is, then, a monstrous thing
that a man who was of the race of the Eumolpidae,1 born of honorable ancestors
and a citizen of Athens, should be punished for having transgressed one of your
established customs; and the pleadings of his relatives and friends did not save
him, nor the public services which he and his ancestors had rendered to the
city; no, nor yet his office of hierophant; but you punished him, because he was
judged to be guilty;—and this Neaera, who has committed acts of
sacrilege against this same god, and has transgressed the laws, shall you not
punish her—her and her daughter?
1 The Eumolpidae were descendants of the legendary Eumolpus. Certain sacred functions connected with the worship of Demeter and Dionysus were theirs by ancestral right; for instance, the Hierophant had always to be a Eumolpid, as therefore Archias was.
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.
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