Against Leptines
Encyclopedia
Against Leptines was a speech give by Demosthenes
Demosthenes
Demosthenes was a prominent Greek statesman and orator of ancient Athens. His orations constitute a significant expression of contemporary Athenian intellectual prowess and provide an insight into the politics and culture of ancient Greece during the 4th century BC. Demosthenes learned rhetoric by...

 in which he called for the repeal of a law
Law
Law is a system of rules and guidelines which are enforced through social institutions to govern behavior, wherever possible. It shapes politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus...

 which denied anyone a special exemption from paying public charges (leitourgiai). This law had been proposed by a man named Leptines
Leptines
Leptines was an Athenian orator. He is known as the proposer of a law that no Athenian, whether citizen or resident alien , should be exempt from the public charges for the state festivals.The object was to provide funds for the festivals and public spectacles at a time when both the treasury and...

, so the speech came to be known as Against Leptines. Although Dio Chrysostom
Dio Chrysostom
Dio Chrysostom , Dion of Prusa or Dio Cocceianus was a Greek orator, writer, philosopher and historian of the Roman Empire in the 1st century. Eighty of his Discourses are extant, as well as a few Letters and a funny mock essay In Praise of Hair, as well as a few other fragments...

(31.128-9) says that Demosthenes won the case, his account has been dismissed as inaccurate. An inscription shows that Ctesippus, son of Chabrias (whose inheritable exemption Demosthenes was arguing to preserve), performed a liturgy that "is unlikely to have been voluntary," and there is no evidence of any grants of exemption after the trial.

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