Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/385

FINE IMPOSED ON MILTIADES. 367 stances, it was the interest of the accused party to name, even in his own case, some real and serious penalty, something which the jurors might be likely to deem not wholly inadequate to his crime just proved ; for if he proposed some penalty only trifling, he drove them to prefer the heavier sentence recommended by his opponent. Accordingly, in the case of Miltiades, his friends, desirous of inducing th*> jurors to refuse their assent to the punishment of death, proposed a fine of fifty talents as the self- assessed penalty of the defendant ; and perhaps they may have stated, as an argument in the case, that such a sum would suffice to defray the costs of the expedition. The fine was imposed, but Miltiades did not live to pay it his injured limb mortified, and he died, leaving the fine to be paid by his son Kimon. According to Cornelius Nepos, Diodorus, and Plutarch, he was put in prison, after having been fined, and there died. 1 But order to escape a capital sentence invoked by the accuser (see Demosthen. cont. Timokrat. c. 34, p. 743, R). Nor was there any fear, as Plainer imagines, that in the generality of cases the dikasts would be left under the necessity of choosing between an extravagant penalty and something merely nominal ; for the interest of the accused party himself would pre- vent this from happening. Sometimes we see him endeavoring by entreaties to prevail upon the accuser voluntarily to abate something of the penalty which he had at first named ; and the accuser might probably do this, if he saw that the dikasts were not likely to go along with that first proposition. In one particular case, of immortal memory, that which Platner contem- plates actually did happen ; and the death of Sokrates was the effect of it. Sokrates, having been found guilty, only by a small majority of votes among the dikasts, was called upon to name a penalty upon himself, in opposition to that of death, urged by Meletus. He was in vain entreated by his friends to name a fine of some tolerable amount, which they would at once have paid in his behalf; but he would hardly be prevailed upon to name any penalty at all, affirming that he had deserved honor rather than punishment : at last, he named a fine so small in amount, as to be really tantamount to an acquittal. Indeed, Xenophon states that he would not name any counter-penalty at all ; and in the speech ascribed to him, he con- fended that he had even merited the signal honor of a public maintenance in the prytaneium (Plato, Apol Sok. c. 27; Xenoph. Apol. Sok. 23; Diogen. Lae'rt. ii, 41). Plato and Xenophon do not agree; but taking tho two together, it would seem that he must have named a very small fine. There can be little doubt that this circumstance, together with the tenor of his defence, caused the dikasts to vote for the proposition of Meletus. Cornelius Nepos, Miltiade's, c. 7 ; and Kimon, c. 1 ; Plutarch, Kimon. c