ey treat this city. It
is your part, now that you have heard the charges, to impose upon them
that penalty which seems to be the measure of their guilt."

(4) Lit. "the sound of soul."

(5) Or, "they have been judge and jury both, and executioners to
boot."

Such were the words of the magistrates. Among the men thus accused, all
save one denied immediate participation in the act. It was not their
hands that had dealt the blow. This one not only confessed the deed, but
made a defence in words somewhat as follows:

"As to treating you with indifference, men of Thebes, that is not
possible for a man who knows that with you lies the power to deal with
him as you list. Ask rather on what I based my confidence when I slew
the man; and be well assured that, in the first place, I based it on the
conviction that I was doing right; next, that your verdict will also
be right and just. I knew assuredly how you dealt with Archias (6) and
Hypates and that company whom you detected in conduct similar to that
of Euphron: you did not stay for formal voting, but at the first
opportunity within your reach you guided the sword of vengeance,
believing that by the verdict of mankind a sentence of death had already
been passed against the conspicuously profane person, the manifest
traitor, and him who lays to his hand to become a tyrant. See, then,
what follows. Euphron was liable on each of these several counts: he was
a conspicuously profane person, who took into his keeping temples rich
in votive offerings of gold and silver, and swept them bare of their
sacred treasures; he was an arrant traitor--for what treason could
be more manifest than Euphron's? First he was the bosom friend of
Lacedaemon, but presently chose you in their stead; and, after exchange
of solemn pledges between yourselves and him, once more turned round and
played the traitor to you, and delivered up the harbour to your enemies.
Lastly, he was most undisguisedly a tyrant, who made not free men only,
but free fellow-citizens his slaves; who put to death, or drove into
exile, or robbed of their wealth and property, not malefactors, note
you, but the mere victims of his whim and fancy; and these were ever
the better folk. Once again restored by the help of your sworn foes
and antagonists, the Athenians, to his native town of Sicyon, the first
thing he did was to take up arms against the governor from Thebes; but,
finding himself powerless to drive him from the ac