[76]
There is also a fourth tribunal, that at the Prytaneum. Its function is that,
if a man is struck by a stone, or a piece of wood or iron, or anything of that
sort, falling upon him, and if someone, without knowing who threw it, knows and
possesses the implement of homicide, he takes proceedings against these
implements in that court. Well, if it is not righteous to deny a trial even to a
lifeless and senseless thing, the object of so grave an accusation, assuredly it
is impious and outrageous that a man who may possibly be not guilty, and who in
any case,—and I will assume him to be guilty,—is a human
being endowed by fortune with the same nature as ourselves, should be made an
outcast on such a charge without a hearing and without a verdict.
Demosthenes. Demosthenes with an English translation by A. T. Murray, Ph.D., LL.D. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1939.
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