102
It seems to me, Athenians, that Leptines—and pray, be not angry,He addresses himself directly to Leptines. for I am not going to say anything offensive about you—Leptines has either never read Solon’s laws or else does not understand them. For if Solon made a law that every man could grant his property to whomsoever he pleased, in default of legitimate offspring, not with the object of depriving the next of kin of their rights of consanguinity, but that by making the prize open to all he might excite a rivalry in doing good one to another;
103
and if you, on the contrary, have proposed a law that the people shall not be permitted to bestow on any man any part of what is their own, how can you be said to have read or understood the laws of Solon? You make the nation barren of would-be patriots by proclaiming unmistakably that those who benefit us shall gain nothing by it.
104
Again, there is another excellent law of Solon, forbidding a man to speak ill of the dead, even if he is himself defamed by the dead man’s children. You do not speak ill of our departed benefactors, Leptines; you do ill to them, when you blame onei.e. of their descendants, whose demerits are no justification for cancelling a reward once given. But the Greek is not clear. and assert that another is unworthy, though these charges have nothing to do with the dead men.Or possibly, if ὦν is masculine, though the men thus charged have no connection with the dead. Are you not very far from the intention of Solon?
