[54]
Yet mark how
righteously and admirably these distinctions are severally defined by the
lawgiver who defined them originally. “If a man kill another in an
athletic contest,” he declared him to be not guilty, for this reason,
that he had regard not to the event but to the intention of the agent. That
intention is, not to kill his man, but to vanquish him unslain. If the other
combatant was too weak to support the struggle for victory, he considered him
responsible for his own fate, and therefore provided no retribution on his
account.
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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