Assembly

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

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

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.

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

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.

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 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.

They voted him guilty and passed him on to your court.

you have only to observe the signs that followed the adverse vote.

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:

the Assembly spent a whole day over the case;

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.

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.

It must be done according to authority, as long as the injunction lasts.

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.

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.

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

Thereupon Demosthenes carries another resolution, in which he provides that we take counsel, not only regarding peace, but on the subject of an alliance also;

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.

The competitors for that prize are Alcibiades, Nicias, and myself.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

I have come as one who overpowers;

I know your name, O Assembly — you are Subhadrā, O Sarasvatī;

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

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.

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.

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 …

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.

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.

What, then, do I mean by this, men of Athens?

And well may you, in my view, men of Athens, for this turn of events be grateful to the gods and detest these men.

I observe, men of Athens, that there is no mistaking what kind of speeches you would like to hear and to what kind you are averse.

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.

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.

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

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.

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:

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;

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

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:

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 …

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

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

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.