one of the most ingenious arguments in all of attic oratory is to be found in the speech Lysias wrote for Euphiletus to deliver at his trial for the murder of Eratosthenes (Lys. 1.30–5). In his speech Euphiletus first describes to the court how his wife was seduced by Eratosthenes, then recounts how he discovered the affair, caught the adulterer in the act, and despite an offer to pay compensation, slew him. Euphiletus defends his action by citing the law of the Areopagus that whoever kills an adulterer caught in flagranti with his wife cannot be convicted of murder. Euphiletus further points out that the same exemption applies to the man who catches someone seducing his pallake. If the lawgiver regarded the seduction of a pallake as so serious that it merited the death penalty, Euphiletus argues, he must have regarded the seduction of a wife as even more reprehensible, deserving a penalty worse than death.

Euphiletus then proceeds to claim that the lawgiver considered rape a far less serious crime than seduction. In support of his point, he had the clerk of the court read out a section from another law. He singles out two provisions from this law, first, that the man who rapes (αἰσχύνῃ βíᾳ) a free man or a child shall pay only damages, and, second, that the man who rapes a woman shall be liable to the same penalty. From these provisions, he concludes that the lawgiver thought that rapists merited a less severe penalty than did seducers, for he punished the former merely with a fine, but the latter with death.