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İngilizce Yunanca

26 if, acting on this principle, the citizen rejected at the ballot or at the election should put himself on an equality with the chosen citizen; if, in a word, neither young nor old should do his duty, but each man, banishing all discipline from life, should regard his own wish as law, as authority, as all in all—if, I say, we should act like this, could the government continue to be carried on? What? Would the laws be any longer valid? What violence, insolence and lawlessness there would be throughout the city every day! What scurrility instead of our present decency of language and behavior!

27 Why need one repeat that order is everywhere maintained by the laws and by obedience to the laws? You yourselves have the sole right of judging our case, though every Athenian was in the ballot and all, I am sure, wanted to be allotted to this court. Why is this? Because by lot you were chosen and then assigned to this case. Those are the instructions of the law. And then will you, who owe your presence here to the laws, allow a man, who flouts the laws by word and deed, to escape from your grasp? Will none of you show anger or bitterness at this shameless ruffian’s defiance of the laws?