42
Why, it is clear that even the makers of our laws did not think well, when people happened in a fight to break each other’s heads, to make it a case for banishment from their country; else they would have exiled a goodly number. But in the case of any persons who, designing to kill, wounded others without being able to kill them, they appointed the punishment in that degree of severity, judging it meet that where they had shown design and premeditation they should pay the penalty: though if they might not have succeeded, none the less their best efforts had been exerted.Cf. Plat. Laws 9.876e ff.
43
And in this way you have decided, many a time in the past, on this point of premeditation. Extraordinary, indeed, it would be, if in all cases of wounds received through some drunken rivalry, or game, or abuse, or in a fight for a mistress,—affairs of which everyone repents on better consideration,—you are to inflict a punishment of such awful severity as that of expelling any of our citizens from their native land.
44
I wonder most of all at this man’s temperament. For it does not seem to me that the same person can be both a lover and a slanderer, since the former implies the simpler sort of man, and the latter the most villainous. I could wish that I were allowed to expose this man’s wickedness before you in all its other effects, so that you might understand how in justice he ought far rather to be on trial for his life than bringing others into peril of losing their native land.
