40
Wherefore you ought now to condemn this man as one whom you have judged to be a hereditary enemy of the city, and to set neither pity nor forgiveness nor any favour above the established laws and the oaths that you have sworn.
41
And you should ask yourselves, gentlemen, what reason you could have for sparing such men as these. Is it because, unfortunate though their public career has been, they are otherwise orderly persons, who have lived sober lives? Have not most of them been prostitutes, while some have lain with their sisters, and others have had children by their daughters;
42
others, again, have performed Mysteries, mutilated the Hermae, and committed profanity against all the gods and offences against the whole city, showing injustice and illegality alike in their public treatment of their fellow-men and in their behavior to each other, refraining from no audacity, and unversed in no outrageous practice? Indeed, there is nothing that they have been spared, or have spared. For their propensity is to be ashamed of what is honorable, and to glory in what is base.
43
It is true, gentlemen, you have acquitted ere now some persons though you held them guilty, because you supposed that they would be useful to you in the future. Well, what hope is there that the city will derive any benefit from this man, whom you will know for the worthless wretch he is, when he makes his defence, and whose villainy you have learnt from the general tenor of his life?
