Aristogeiton

This being so, it seems to me that one would not be wrong in saying that, while Aristogeiton is on his trial, it is your character that is being tested, your reputation that is at stake.

You who are to give the verdict have come here knowing better than we, the accusers, that this man, since he is a state-debtor and registered as such in the Acropolis, has no right to speak at all;

To prove the truth of this statement, please call the man who buried the defendant’s father without payment, and also the arbitrator in the action which the witness here in court brought against him for the sale of his sister, and produce the indictment.

If Moerocles replies that this view is too subtle for his understanding, and that, to prevent them from running away, he put them in chains upon his own responsibility, demand of him why in the world he did not see the justice of this proceeding when Taureas, Pataecus, Aristogeiton and himself, though they had been committed to prison, were not only not in chains but would even address the Assembly.

—you all too unfeeling men, who neither before the rest of the world nor before yourselves feel shame, who upon the same charges upon which you acquitted Aristogeiton have banished Demosthenes, and the privileges which those who dare to set your authority at naught are permitted to have without your leave you do not grant to me, to enable me, if I can, by calling in the sums owing me and levying c …

Neither will you ever show that I received money from Harpalus, for neither was I tried and proved guilty nor did I take money, and if you are looking for excuse to the notorious decision of the Council or to the Areopagus, recall to mind the trial of Aristogeiton and hide your heads in shame;

when they name the Sciritan company of the Lacedaemonians, which never existed, as Thucydides says, and the Athenians honor Harmodius and Aristogeiton most of all, as having freed the city and killed the tyrant.

And I know that Harmodius and Aristogeiton served as slaves among the Persians, and that the fifteen hundred statues of Demetrius of Phalerum were all taken down by the Athenians in one and the same day.

and so it was that those benefactors of the state, Harmodius and Aristogeiton, men pre-eminent for their virtues, were so nurtured by that chaste and lawful love—or call it by some other name than love if you like—and so disciplined, that when we hear men praising what they did, we feel that words are inadequate to the eulogy of their deeds.

He will cite first those benefactors of yours, Harmodius and Aristogeiton, describing their fidelity to one another, and telling how in their case this relationship proved the salvation of the state.

whence it came about that Harmodius and Aristogeiton, provoked, carried out their deed, with many sharing in it.

And at last, since he could not, do what he might, contrive to die, he promised to inform on many others, and persuaded Hippias to give him his right hand as a pledge of faith;

Aristogeiton later, having been seized and tortured for a long time.

She, being privy to the plot of Harmodius and Aristogeiton against Hipparchus, did not in any way tell of it, though well tortured.

It has been conclusively proved, men of Athens, that the defendant, Aristogeiton, is a state-debtor and disfranchised, and that the laws expressly forbid all such to address the Assembly.

For after the disasters to the Greek forces at Chaeroneia, when the very foundations of our State were threatened with the utmost danger, when Hypereides proposed that the disfranchised citizens should be reinstated in order that, if any such danger should menace our State, all classes might unite wholeheartedly in the struggle for liberty, the defendant indicted this decree as unconstitutional an …

I should like to ask him whether his indictment of the decree was lawful and right or on the other hand unjust and illegal.

and secondly because the people drew up a law forbidding anyone to speak ill of Harmodius and Aristogeiton or sing disparaging songs about them.

Further, the great Aristogeiton and Harmodius were honored, not because of their birth but because of their bravery, of which you, Dicaeogenes, have no share.