Academic literature on the topic 'Trials, litigation, etcwarr, simon'

"[40] I think, Council, that I have given adequate proof that I am not to blame for what happened. But my attitude to quarrels over matters like this is such that, though I have suffered a great many other outrages from Simon and had my head split open by him, I could not bring myself to take legal action against him. I thought it preposterous that just because we had been in competition with each other for a lover one should try to have people exiled from their homeland. [41] Then again, I did not think that intent applied to a wound unless the person inflicting it wanted to kill. For who is so foolish as to spend a long time planning to wound one of his enemies? [42] Clearly our legislators did not see fit, just because people happened to injure each other’s heads in a fight, to punish them with exile from their fatherland. In that case they would have exiled a good many people. No, it was for those who having planned to kill people wounded them and failed to kill that they made the penalties so severe. They believed that they should be punished for acts which were planned and intended; if they failed, the deed had still been done as far as their action was concerned. [43] This is a decision you have often reached before now in the matter of intent. For it would be bizarre if, whenever people received a wound as a result of drunken rivalry or horseplay or an insult or a fight over a mistress, for incidents which everyone regrets when they come to their senses, you are to make the penalties so severe and awful that you exile some of the citizen body from their homeland. [44] One thing especially amazes me about his character. I don’t think that the same nature is capable of both love and malicious litigation; the former belongs to simpler souls, the latter to the most unscrupulous. I wish it was possible for me to give proof of this man’s criminality in your court from the rest of his conduct, so that you would realize that it would be far more just for him to be on trial for his life than to place others in danger of losing their homeland. [45] Most of it I shall omit. But I shall mention a fact which you should hear and which will be an indication of his audacity and impudence. In Corinth, after arriving too late for the battle against the enemy and the expedition to Koroneia, he fought with Laches the taxiarch and struck him; and though the whole citizen body took part in the expedition, he was deemed thoroughly undisciplined and wicked and alone of the Athenians he was formally dismissed by the generals. [46] There are many other tales I could tell about him, but since it is not." In Trials from Classical Athens. Routledge, 2002. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203130476-14.