4. This is my thirty-third year, gentlemen of the jury, and the twentieth since the restoration (of the Democracy). So I was clearly thirteen years old when my father died at the hands of the Thirty. At that age I neither understood what an oligarchy was, nor could I have helped my father under his unjust treatment. 5. And I could not have had reason to plot against him for the sake of the money, for my elder brother Pantaleon took everything and as guardian took our patrimony, so that on many accounts, gentlemen of the jury, it was for my interest to desire my father's life. So it is necessary to call these facts to your minds, and I shall need but few words; you know well enough that I speak the truth. And nevertheless I will furnish evidence for these facts. EVIDENCE. 6. Now probably, gentlemen of the jury, he will make no denial of these facts, but will say before you, as he dared to affirm before the arbiter, that one does not use a forbidden word in saying some one has "killed" his father, for the law does not forbid this, but forbids the use of the word "homicide." 7. But I think that you should make your decision not about the letter of the law, but its intention. You all know that those who kill others are homicides, and those who are homicides kill others. For it would be a great task for a lawgiver to write all the words having the same signification, but in mentioning one term, his meaning covers all. 8. This is the case then, is it not, Theomnestus,--if any one called you a beater of father or mother, you would think he should be punished, but if any one said you beat your father or mother, you would then think he should go unfined as saying no forbidden word! 9. For I should like to hear from you (for in this you are skilled in practice and speech). If any one should say you "flung away" your shield, and in the law was written that a man was liable to punishment if any one declares he "threw it away," would you not have prosecuted him, and would it have been enough for you to say if some one declared you "flung it away," I do not care, for _flinging_ and _throwing_ are not the same thing. 10. Now could you admit the charge as one of the Eleven, if some one brought in a man on the charge of having stripped off his cloak or shirt but you would have discharged him because he was not called a "clothesstealer." And if any one should be caught carrying off a boy, you would not say he was a kidnapper, if you quibble with terms, and will not pay attention to the facts to express which terms are invented. 11. Consider this now, gentlemen of the jury. For this man seems never to have gone to the Areopagus through indolence and indifference. For you all know that there, whenever they are conducting a trial for murder, they do not make their depositions with this term, but with that by which I have been abused. For the prosecutor makes a deposition that "he killed," the defendant that "he did not kill." 12.