Against Agoratus

It is the duty of you all, gentlemen of the jury, to avenge the men who were put to death as supporters of your democracy, and it is also my duty in particular; for Dionysodorus was my brother-in-law and cousin. It happens, therefore, that I share with your democracy the same settled animosity against the defendant, Agoratus; the acts that he has committed are of a kind to give me good reason to hate him today, and justification to you for the penalty which, by Heaven’s will, you are to impose on him. For Dionysodorus, my brother-in-law, and many others whose names you shall be duly told,—all loyal friends of your democracy,—were done to death by him in the time of the Thirty, through his act in informing against them. By this conduct he inflicted not only grievous losses on me and each of their relatives as individuals, but serious injuries—so I consider—on the whole city at large, by depriving it of men of that character. I therefore, gentlemen, consider it an act of justice and piety in all of you as well as myself to take vengeance as far as each of us is able; and I think we should stand better both with the gods and with mankind if we did so. You must hear the whole of the circumstances, gentlemen, from the beginning, in order that you may know, first, in what manner your democracy was dissolved, and by whom; second, in what manner those men were done to death by Agoratus; and further, what injunction they gave when they were about to die. For when you have been accurately informed of all these things you will with the more pleasure and piety condemn this man Agoratus. I shall therefore start my relation at a point from which it will be easiest both for me to explain and for you to understand.