[116]
Your ancestors inflicted the extreme penalty on men who simply lent the traitor verbal help. Will you fall so short of their example as to let go as innocent the man who abandoned the state in deed as well as word? Do not do it, gentlemen of the jury. Do not give a verdict unworthy of yourselves; for it would be both impious and contrary to your traditions. If only one such decree were recorded, we might have said that anger rather than real conviction had prompted it. But when the same punishment was meted out by them to all alike it is surely plain that our ancestors were by nature bound to make war an all such crimes.
Lycurgus. Minor Attic Orators in two volumes, 2, with an English translation by J. O. Burtt, M.A. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1962.
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