Reader

I think that no man will deny, men of Athens, that it is the mark of a disloyal citizen and a low-minded man so to hate or favour anyone who enters into public life that he takes no thought for the State’s best interests, but shapes his public utterances sometimes to vent his malice and sometimes to prove his friendship, as a number of those are doing who come forward here to speak. To these I would say no more than this: that in my opinion, if they have done something of the kind, their greatest offence is not this, but rather that they show themselves unprepared ever to stop doing it!

As for yourselves, I give you this advice: do not be guilty of self-ruin and think it enough if you punish these men when you see fit; but, while holding them in check so far as lies in your power, you must yourselves, as becomes men deliberating on behalf of the State, put aside your own private feuds and aim at what is most to the common good, reflecting that the punishment of no individual, nor even of all the politicians in a body, can square the account if once the laws should be destroyed on which your very life depends.

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