Against Nicomachus

There have been cases, gentlemen of the jury, of persons who, when brought to trial, have appeared to be guilty, but who, on showing forth their ancestors’ virtues and their own benefactions, have obtained your pardon. Since, therefore, you are satisfied with the plea of the defendants, if they are shown to have done some service to the State, it is fair that you should also listen to the accusers, if they show forth a long course of villainy in the accused. Now, to tell how Nicomachus’s father was a public slave, and what were the man’s own occupations in his youth, and at what age he was admitted to his clan, would be a lengthy affair: but when he became a commissioner for transcribing the laws, it is common knowledge what outrages he committed on the city. For whereas he had been instructed to transcribe the laws of Solon within four months, he usurped the place of Solon as lawgiver, extended his office over six years instead of four months, and day by day, in return for payment, he inserted some laws and erased others. We were brought to such a pass that we had our laws dispensed to us from his hands, and parties to suits produced opposite laws in the courts, both sides asserting that they had obtained them from Nicomachus. When the magistrates imposed summary fines on him, and brought him up in court, he refused to hand over the laws: nay, the city was already involved in the gravest disasters, and still he had not been relieved of his office, nor had submitted to an audit of his proceedings. And observe, gentlemen, how, having suffered no punishment for that conduct, he has now turned his new office to similar account: first, he has been transcribing for four years, when he could have discharged his duty in thirty days; and second, although he had definite orders as to the texts that he had to transcribe, he assumed supreme authority over the whole code, and after handling more business than anyone had ever done before he is the only person who has held office without submitting to an audit. Everyone else, with each new presidency, renders an account of his office; but you, Nicomachus, have not deigned to show your accounts for as much as four years; you, alone of the citizens, claim licence to hold office for a lengthy period, without either submitting to an audit, or obeying the decrees, or respecting the laws: you insert this, and erase that, and carry insolence to such a pitch that you regard the State’s property as yours, who are yourself its slave! It is your duty, therefore, gentlemen of the jury, to remember what was the ancestry of Nicomachus, and also how ungrateful has been his treatment of you with his illegal acts, and to punish him: so, since you have not made him pay the penalty for each one of them, exact requital now, at any rate, for them all.