For they obtain leave to bring actions against me on private complaints, but make their accusations on behalf of the interests of the state, and they spend more time in slandering my father than they do in informing you with respect to their sworn charges; and so great is their contempt of the law that they claim personal satisfaction from me for the wrongs which, as they say, you suffered at my father's hands.
But it is my opinion that charges involving the public interest have nothing to do with private suits; but as Teisias often reproaches me with my father's banishment, and is more zealous concerning your affairs than he is regarding his own, I must address my defense to these matters. Certainly I should be ashamed, if I were to seem to any of my fellow-citizens to have less concern for my father's good name than for my own peril.
Now so far as the older men are concerned, a brief statement could have sufficed: for they all know that the same men were responsible for the destruction of the democracy and for my father's exile; but for the benefit of the younger men, who have lived after the events and have often heard the slanderers, I will begin my exposition from an earlier time.
Now the persons who first plotted against the democracy and established the Four
Hundred,
And since they knew that in matters pertaining to the gods the city would be most enraged
if any man should be shown to be violating the Mysteries,
The city was greatly excited by reason of the gravity of the charges, and a meeting of
the Assembly was hastily called at which my father so clearly proved that the accusers
were lying that the people would have been glad to punish them, and furthermore elected
him general for the Sicilian expedition.
Why need I say more? They did not cease until they had recalled my father from the expedition and had put to death some of his friends and had banished others from the city. But when he had learned the power of his enemies and the misfortunes of his friends, although he was of opinion that he was being grossly wronged because they would not try him when he was in Athens but were for condemning him in his absence, not even in these circumstances did my father see fit to desert to the enemy;
on the contrary, even in exile he was so scrupulous to avoid injuring his city that he went to Argos and remained quietly there. But his enemies reached such a pitch of insolence that they persuaded you to banish him from Greece entirely, to inscribe his name on a column as a traitor, and to send envoys to demand his surrender by the Argives. And he, being at a loss to know what to do in the misfortunes which encompassed him and everywhere hemmed him in, as he saw no other means of safety, was compelled at last to take refuge with the Lacedaemonians.
These are the actual facts; but such an excess of insolence have my father's enemies
that they accuse him, who was exiled in so illegal a manner as if he had committed
outrageous crimes, and try to ruin his reputation by saying that he caused the
fortification of Decelea,
And sometimes they pretend to despise him,
I think, however, that in justice he should obtain from you a full pardon; for you, when
banished by the Thirty Tyrants,
To what city, or friend, or stranger did you not apply, to entreat them to help you to get back to your country? From what effort did you abstain in your endeavors to be restored? Did you not seize the Piraeus and destroy the crops in the fields and harry the land and set fire to the suburbs and finally assault the walls?
And so vehemently did you believe that these actions were justifiable that you were more indignant with those of your fellow-exiles who were inactive than with those who had been the authors of your misfortunes. It is not fair, therefore, to censure those who wanted the same things which you desired, nor yet to regard all those men as base who, when they were exiles, sought to return, but much more should you condemn those oligarchs who, remaining in Athens, did deeds which deserved the penalty of exile; nor is it fair that you, in judging what sort of citizen my father was, should begin at the time when he had no art in the city's affairs;
on the contrary, you should look to that earlier time and observe how he served the
people before his exile, and call to mind that with two hundred heavy-armed soldiers he
caused the most powerful cities in the Peloponnesus to revolt from the
Lacedaemonians,
Remember, too, I beg you, the many benefits he conferred upon the city after his return
from exile, and, even before that time, the state of affairs here when you received him
back: the democracy had been overthrown,
For the one party
Such was the state of mind of the citizens: the enemy was in control of land and sea;
your financial resources were exhausted, while the Persian king was supplying them with
funds; furthermore, ninety ships had come from Phoenicia
when the army summoned my father, and he did not treat them with disdain in their plight, nor did he rebuke them for the past, nor did he deliberate about the future; on the contrary, he chose at once to suffer any misfortune with his country rather than to enjoy prosperity with the Lacedaemonians, and he made it manifest to all that he was warring on those who had banished him and not on you, and that his heart was set on a return to Athens and not on her ruin.
Having thrown in his lot with you, he persuaded Tissaphernes