The Law of Audit
In this city, so ancient and so great, no man is free from the audit who has held any public trust.
For example, the law directs that priests and priestesses be subject to audit, all collectively, and each severally and individually—persons who receive perquisites only, and whose occupation is to pray to heaven for you ; and they are made accountable not only separately, but whole priestly families together …
Again, the law directs that the trierarch be subject to audit, though they have had no public funds in their hands, and though they are not men who filch large sums from your treasury and pay out small ones, and not men who claim to be making donations when they are only paying back what is your own, but men who are acknowledged by all to have spent their family fortunes in their ambition to serve you.
Furthermore, not the trierarchs alone, but also the highest bodies in the state, come under the verdict of the courts of audit. For, first, the Senate of the Areopagus is required by the law to file its accounts with the Board of Auditors and to submit to their examination ; yes, even those men, who sit with solemn aspect yonder as the court of highest competence, are brought under your verdict.
And so deep is his distrust of those who are subject to audit, that he says at the very beginning of the laws, “The officer who has not yet submitted his accounts shall not leave the country.” “Heracles!” some one may answer, “because I held an office may I not leave the country?” No, for fear you may make profit of the public money or the public acts, and then run away. Furthermore, the man who is subject to audit is not allowed to consecrate his property, or to make a votive offering, or to receive adoption, or to dispose of his property by will ; and he is under many other prohibitions. In a word, the lawgiver holds under attachment the property of all who are subject to audit, until their accounts shall have been audited.
References:
- Aeschines. Speeches. Perseus Digital Library. Accessed September 12, 2019. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0002