Moerocles

On the contrary, he will have the audacity to advise you that you ought not to punish, but to acquit, the one who has thus manifestly been convicted of lodging false denunciations against the merchants;

For surely, Moerocles, we are not now going to exact ten talents from the Melians in accordance with the terms of your decree, because they gave harborage to the pirates, and yet suffer this man to go free who has transgressed both your decree and the laws which maintain our state.

Moerocles, men of the jury, who proposed the decree against those who injure merchants, and who persuaded, not you alone, but your allies as well, to organize a sort of police to repress the wrongdoers, will not be ashamed presently on behalf of Theocrines to speak in opposition to his own decree.

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.

If, on the other hand, he shall say that he was not then archon, he had no right to speak, at any rate according to the laws. Accordingly, how can it be equal justice when some men are in office who have no right even to speak and others are in fetters whose father was useful to you in numerous ways?

Why did you prosecute Moerocles, because he had extorted twenty drachmas apiece from the lessees of the silver-mines;