Assembly

will pass over the most of these incidents and those which happened long ago, but I do wish to remind you of what took place at the very assembly in which I instituted this process against Timarchus.

The man is our friend Hegesandrus there, a man now, though he too used to be a woman, Laodamas’ s woman;

it is every time that Timarchus mounts the platform in the assembly;

The Assembly had met to give audience to Nicias, Lamachus, and Alcibiades, the generals about to leave with the Sicilian expedition—in fact, Lamachus’ flag-ship was already lying offshore—when suddenly Pythonicus rose before the people and cried:

Witness You were on the commission of inquiry, Diognetus when Pythonicus impeached Alcibiades before the Assembly?

They enjoyed all the rights of ordinary citizens, except that they were forbidden to speak in the Assembly or become members of the Council.

Only last year you all saw the culprit who was arrested by them in the Assembly.

But this preliminary resolution had already been drafted and preconcerted by them, in order that, if you should be captivated by the promises and expectations which Aristomachus held out to you, it might be ratified there and then by the Assembly, and no impediment might remain.

Such, men of Athens, are the purposes for which the provisional resolution was moved, in the hope that it would be ratified by a deluded Assembly;

But when it was announced that the troops at Tamynae were blockaded, and when the Council carried a preliminary decree to dispatch the rest of the cavalry, to which he belonged, then, alarmed at the prospect of this campaign, he came forward with a voluntary gift at the next meeting of the Assembly, even before the Committee could take their seats.

Now I propose, men of Athens, to name those who have been condemned by you, after an adverse vote of the Assembly, for violating the festival, and to explain what some of them had done to incur your anger, so that you may compare their guilt with that of Meidias.

Again, I expect that he will not shrink from vilifying the people and the Assembly, but will repeat what he had the effrontery to say when the plaint was first brought in:

Before the meeting of the Assembly any Athenian citizen who wishes shall write down the laws proposed by him and exhibit the same in front of the Eponymous Heroes, to the end that the People may vote on the question of the time allowed to the Legislative Committee with due regard to the total number of laws proposed.

The commissioners who preside by lot at the Assembly are required, immediately after religious observances, to put the question respecting the sessions of the Legislative Committee, and respecting the fund from which their fees are to be paid.

In the first presidency and on the eleventh day thereof, in the Assembly, the Herald having read prayers, a vote shall be taken on the laws, to wit, first upon laws respecting the Council, and secondly upon general statutes, and then upon statutes enacted for the nine Archons, and then upon laws affecting other authorities.

The assembly (*pariṣad* (परिषद्)) is said to be tenfold, or threefold in summary.

By eating, he increases his sin where the assembly (*pariṣad* (परिषद्)) is present.

for *dharma* (धर्म), for the assembly (*pariṣad* (परिषद्)), and for the order of penance (*prāyaścitta* (प्रायश्चित्त)).

Well, gentlemen, said he, when our friend Euthydemus has attained his full powers, and some question of policy is before the Assembly, he won’t be backward in offering advice:

When chairman in the Assemblies he would not permit the people to record an illegal vote, but, upholding the laws, resisted a popular impulse that might even have overborne any but himself.

and yet, among those who want to shine as speakers in the Assembly and as statesmen, there are some who think that they will be able to do so on a sudden, by instinct, without training or study.

You hear, fellow citizens, how the lawgiver commands that the man who is crowned by the people be proclaimed among the people, on the Pnyx, at a meeting of the assembly, and nowhere else;

For the law expressly commands that if the Senate confer a crown, the crown shall be proclaimed in the senate-house, and if the people confer it, in the assembly, and nowhere else.

men who have set aside the lawful processes of the courts, and carry their verdicts in the assembly by appeal to passion.

But most monstrous of all is the fact that a man of his character should talk as though he were a friend of the people, and call others oligarchs and foes of the democracy.

for the law which he framed violates the oath of the People and Council.

But I do ask you to preside over our speeches in a fair and impartial manner, and one and all to act as Archons.

every man of you who is about to raise his hand to vote is a delegate whose business is peace and war, no matter which he prefers.

I think you all understand, gentlemen, that it is better to make peace on fair terms than to continue fighting.

As it was, you sentenced him to death on your own authority and executed him, when even an allied state is denied the right of inflicting the death-penalty in such fashion without the consent of the Athenian people.

But from the moment that you punished the authors of the revolt—of whom my father was not found to be one—and granted the other citizens of Mytilene an amnesty which allowed them to continue living on their own land, he has not been guilty of a single fault, of a single lapse from duty.

The Athenian people rescued him from the very hands of the Eleven:

May the assembly, the army, and the council protect you — the wise daughters of Prajāpati.

May the assembly and the council both protect me — Prajāpati's two daughters of one mind.

May the Sun protect my sight, Bṛhaspati my speech, King Soma the assembly — I become Indra for your beholding.

A man who never yielded or shrank before the storm of protest with which the whole Assembly admonishes those who offend it, would readily heed the protest of an individual!

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.

Yet is it not absurd that, while decrees passed by you in full assembly as in accordance with the laws should be invalid, you should imagine that you ought to make the whim of Aristogeiton to flout the laws more authoritative than the laws themselves?

No, but in obedience to decrees passed by your assembly and senate and at the bidding of the law I demanded of him the ship’s equipment which he owed to the state.

The senate, angered at the treatment which I had received and seeing the plight that I was in, thinking, too, that the insult had been offered, not to me, but to itself and the assembly which had passed the decree and the law which compelled us to exact payment for the equipment,— the senate, I say, ordered me to prefer an impeachment, and that the prytanes should give Theophemus two days’ notice …

When this decree had been passed, the magistrates chose by lot those who owed the ship’s equipment to the state and handed over their names, and the overseers of the dockyards passed on the list to the trierarchs who were then about to sail, and to the overseers of the navy-boards.

Moreover, before these proceedings, Solon ordered that the laws should be exposed before the statues of the eponymous heroes and handed in to the town-clerk to recite them at the meetings of the Assembly, so that each of you may hear them more than once and digest them at leisure, and if they are just and expedient, may add them to the statute-book.

You know there is a law making death the penalty for anyone who breaks his promise to the Assembly or one of the Councils or law-courts.

Although many speeches have been made, men of Athens, by all your counsellors, I do not see that you are now any nearer to discovering what ought to be done than before you came up to the Assembly.

I should have wished, men of Athens, that you treat yourselves with that benevolence which you are accustomed to practise toward all other peoples.

Yet for the common people to have no portion at all and their opponents a superabundance is something to astound and alarm intelligent men, as I judge it, men of Athens.

I have repeatedly heard it said in this Assembly that when misfortune befell our democracy, there were some people who urged that it should be restored, and of them I will here mention the Argives only, and that briefly.

one is the same that awaits the rest, but there is another and more serious struggle that comes before it, for you have got to defeat in your debates the faction that deliberately opposes the interests of your city.

for at the same meeting of the Assembly Philip’s ambassadors put his case before you and the decree was duly proposed, so that, as the decree was recited immediately after the conclusion of the speeches, it was impossible for you to pass at once a resolution which gives the lie to the ambassadors.

This simply means that his friends here have persuaded him that you have no memory for what has been stated publicly in the Assembly.

My idea of our duty—do not drown with your clamor what I am about to say, but hear me before you judge—my idea is that, as we have devoted a meeting of the Assembly to the question of receiving the dole, so we ought also to devote a meeting to organization and to equipment for war;

So the speakers in the Assembly, one and all, cried that the democracy was overthrown, that the laws were null and void, and so on.

In dealing with the sum of money under discussion and the other matters referred to this Assembly, I see no difficulty, men of Athens, in either of two methods:

In my opinion the fact that you took the gold is proved to the jury well enough by your being condemned by the council to which you entrusted yourself When Harpalus arrived in Attica, gentlemen of the jury, and the envoys from Philoxenus demanding him were, at the same time, brought into the Assembly, Demosthenes came forward and made a long speech in which he argued that it was not right for Athe …

Is he unaffected by the people’s decrees, which you have sworn to observe in voting, decrees which were proposed, not by any of his enemies, but by Demosthenes himself, and which the people carried on his motion, almost as though he deliberately sought to destroy himself and yet the just verdict, gentlemen of the jury, is, as I see it, simple:

However during the period which followed the people did not forbid us to approach them or to discuss with them;

There is, however, one argument open to them, namely that the people were compelled to pass the votes of honor.

They had, he said, been just towards the Athenian people and observed the laws during their office.

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

When considering the matter, gentlemen of the jury, we ought to begin with the charges which my accusers themselves brought against me at the outset in the Assembly.

The affair was no secret but even gave rise to a discussion in the Assembly, since it was feared that he might bring about a state of war instead of peace between us and the Lacedaemonians.