it just, O Athenians, to honour your benefactors? It is just. Again: is it just to let a man keep what you have once given him? It is just. Then act so yourselves, that you may observe your oaths, and if any one says that your ancestors acted otherwise, resent it, and be sure that whoever cite them as examples, insinuating that they received great obligations and rewarded no one, are base and illeducated men: base, because they falsely accuse your ancestors of ingratitude; ill-taught, because they are ignorant that, if the charge were ever so true, they should rather have denied than have asserted it.

I believe that Leptines will urge this argument too; that the law does not take statues and maintenance from parties who have received them, nor from the state the power of honouring worthy men; but that you will be able either to erect brazen statues, or to grant maintenance or anything you please, except this. In regard to what he will say he leaves to the state, I must observe that, if you take away anything that you have given a man before, you will render all your remaining gifts insecure. For how will the grant of a statue or of maintenance be more secure than the grant of immunity, when it will appear you have given that to persons formerly and taken it away? And even if no inconvenience were to result, I don't think it would be proper to put the commonwealth in this dilemma, that she must give to all indiscriminately the same honours as to her greatest benefactors, or, in default of so doing, make to some no requital at all. For great services it is not our interest that occasions should frequently arise, nor is it easy (methinks) to perform them; 49 but for those of the middling kind, those that are within reach in peaceful and constitutional times, such as loyalty, integrity, diligence, and the like, I consider it both expedient and just to give a recompense. Therefore should the rewards also be kept distinct, that each man may receive from the people such reward as he appears to deserve. In regard to what he will say he leaves to the parties honoured, one class of them will have a very simple and fair plea, claiming to keep all that you gave them for their services; the other will say that whoever tells them they have anything left is a cheat. For a man whose services were judged to have merited immunity, and who obtained from you this honour alone, whether he be an alien or a citizen, after he has been deprived of it, what privilege has he remaining, Leptines? Surely none. Don't denounce the one class as worthless

in order to rob the other, and then, because of what you leave to the latter, rob the former of the sole thing which they have received. To speak plainly: the worst is, not that we shall wrong two or three persons more or less, but that we shall render the honours with which we have remunerated certain people insecure; and I am most urgent not for the immunity, but that the law may not introduce a vicious practice, and one by which every grant will be insecure which the state confers.

The craftiest argument which they imagine they have devised to induce you to revoke the immunities it is better to mention beforehand, lest you should inadvertently be misled. They will say that all these charges of the choral and gymnastic direction are to be classed among religious duties,50 and it would be a shocking thing for any one to be exonerated from duties of religion. For my part, I hold it to be just for persons who have a grant from the people to be exempt from these charges; but what my opponents will do, if they urge this argument, I regard as shocking. For if, what in no other manner they can prove it lawful for you to take away, they endeavour to prove in the name of the gods, surely their conduct will be most shocking and impious. It appears to me that acts for which the gods are appealed to should be such as, even if done under human sanction, would not be characterized as base. That it is not the same thing to have immunity from religious duties and from official services, but that my opponents transfer the name of the official services to the duties of religion for the purpose of deceit, I will bring Leptines himself before you as a witness; for in drawing up the beginning of this law he says: Leptines moved: in order that the richest men may perform the official services, no one shall be exempt but the descendants of Harmodius and Aristogiton." Now, if it were the same thing to have exemption from religious duties and from official services, what did he mean by adding that clause? for not even to those men is exemption from religious duties granted. To prove that it is as I say, please to take first the copy of the pillar, then the beginning of the law of Leptines. Read:

The copy of the pillar

You hear the copy of the pillar, men of Athens, ordering them to be exempt, save from religious duties. Now read the beginning of the law of Leptines:

The law

Good. Put it down. After the words "in order that the richest men may perform the official services, no one shall be exempt," he added, "but the descendants of Harmodius and Aristogiton." With what object, if to do religious duty is to perform official service? For, if he use this argument, it will appear that he has himself framed a clause contrary to the pillar. And I would fain ask Leptines a question: From what can you say that either you leave or our ancestors granted them immunity, when you say the official services appertain to religion? To all the war taxes and the naval charges by the ancient laws they remain liable; and from the official services, if they appertain to religion, they have no exemption. It is written, however, that they shall be exempt. From what? From the aliens' protection-tax? for this is left. Surely not; but from the ordinary official services, as the pillar declares, as you have defined it in your law, as is proved by a length of bygone time, during all which no tribe ever ventured to nominate one of their family to be choir-master, no other nominee to offer them the exchange. Should he venture to contradict this, you must not listen to him.

Again, they will tell you perhaps, in an offhand way, that some persons, pretending to be Megarians and Messenians, 51 get exemption in a body, a great multitude of people, and some, too, that are slaves and stigmatics, a Lycidas, a Dionysius, and others of the like stamp, whom they have selected. If they make such assertions, deal with them in the following way: Require them, if they are telling you the truth, to produce the decrees by which these persons are exempt; for no man among you is exempt unless a decree or a law has granted him exemption, Many of this character have by the influence of your politicians become state friends here, of whom Lycidas is one. But it is a different thing to be a state friend and to have obtained immunity. Then don't let them mislead you; don't, because Lycidas and Dionysius and perhaps some other slaves (thanks to people who are ready to frame such decrees for hire) have been made state friends, don't on this account seek to rob men who are meritorious and free-born and the authors of numerous benefits, of the rewards which they justly received from you. Here again will be a flagrant indignity offered to Chabrias, if politicians of this class are not content with having made his slave Lycidas your state friend, but will on that person's account take away a portion of his rewards, and on a false allegation too! For neither Lycidas nor any one else to whom the people have not expressly granted exemption enjoys it by being a state friend. To these men the people have made no grant; my adversaries will not be able to show it, and if they are impudent enough to make the assertion, they will not be acting right.

What of all things I consider you should especially guard against, men of Athens, I have yet to mention. Granting all to be true that Leptines, arguing in its favour, will say about the law, one disgrace which, by the law being established, will fall upon the state, can under no circumstances be removed. What is this? The reputation of having deceived her benefactors. That this is a disgraceful thing will be admitted, I suppose, by all; how much more disgraceful it is to you than to others allow me to explain. You have an ancient law, one of those in good esteem, that if any man deceives the people by a promise he shall be brought to trial, and on conviction sentenced to death. Are you not then ashamed, O Athenians, at the thought of being known to do yourselves what in others you make punishable with death? One should avoid doing everything which appears and is dishonourable, but especially that for which one is seen to be severe to others; 52 for not a doubt remains that it is wrong to do what a man himself has previously condemned.

You must further take care not to be seen doing in your public character aught that you would avoid doing in your private. Not one of you would take away anything which he gave to another in private; no, nor attempt such a thing. Do it not then in public; but require these men who are to defend the law, if they allege that any of the privileged parties is undeserving, or has not performed the conditions upon which he obtained his privilege, or if they have any other complaint against any one, to indict him according to the amended law that we introduce, whether we pass it, as we pledge ourselves and declare we will, or whether they pass it themselves, as soon as law-revisers are appointed. Each of them, it seems, has an enemy, either Diophantus or Eubulus or some one else. If they decline, if they are unwilling to take this course, consider, men of Athens, whether it is to your credit that you should be known to have taken away from your benefactors what none of these men like to be seen taking from their enemies, and that persons who have served you, and against whom none can bring a charge, should by a law of your passing be deprived all together of their rewards, when, if there be any undeserving, perchance one or two or more, they might, upon an indictment preferred by these men, be separately brought to trial and suffer the like deprivation. I scarcely think it would be to your credit or suitable to your dignity.

Nor must we abandon this point, that the question of merit should be discussed at the time of the grant, when none of these men made opposition, but afterward you should leave it alone, unless you have since been injured by the grantees. Should these men say that you have been (prove it they can not), it should appear that they were punished at the time of their offence. Should you confirm the law without any such ground you will be thought to have deprived the parties from envy, and not from a discovery of their bad character. Every possible reproach (I may say) should be avoided, but this most of all, O Athenians. Why? Because envy is altogether a mark of a bad disposition, and a man who has the feeling is pardonable on no account. Besides, abhorring as our commonwealth does all disgraceful things, there is no reproach from which she is further removed than from the imputation of being envious. Observe how strong are the proofs. In