what penalty adequate, for this criminal letter's iniquities?

But his wrongs are not even limited to us, his own species; he has now
extended his operations to mankind, as I shall show. He does not
permit their tongues to work straight. (But that mention of mankind
calls me back for a moment, reminding me how he turns glossa into
glotta, half robbing me of the tongue itself. Ay, you are a disease of
the tongue in every sense, Tau.) But I return from that digression, to
plead the cause of mankind and its wrongs. The prisoner's designs
include the constraint, racking, and mutilation of their utterance. A
man sees a beautiful thing, and wishes to describe it as kalon, but in
comes Tau, and forces the man to say talon _he_ must have precedence
everywhere, of course. Another man has something to say about a vine,
and lo, before it is out, it is metamorphosed by this miserable
creature into misery; he has changed slaema to tlaema, with a
suggestive hint of tlaemon. And, not content with middle-class
victims, he aims at the Persian king himself, the one for whom land
and sea are said to have made way and changed their nature: Cyrus
comes out at his bidding as Tyrus.

Such are his verbal offences against man; his offences in deed remain.
Men weep, and bewail their lot, and curse Cadmus with many curses for
introducing Tau into the family of letters; they say it was his body
that tyrants took for a model, his shape that they imitated, when they
set up the erections on which men are crucified. Stayros the vile
engine is called, and it derives its vile name from him. Now, with all
these crimes upon him, does he not deserve death, nay, many deaths?
For my part I know none bad enough but that supplied by his own shape
--that shape which he gave to the gibbet named Stayros after him by
men.