Exordia

Surely if it had been some other people before whom these speeches about you were being made, I do not think these men would be finding it so easy to lie nor would the hearers have tolerated many of their assertions. But as things now are, I think that in general all and every take advantage of your simplicity and in particular these men have done so on the present occasion; for they have found in you such an audience for charges against yourselves as they would have found in no other people, as I know for a certainty.

And well may you, in my view, men of Athens, for this turn of events be grateful to the gods and detest these men.[*](Chians and Byzantines.) For the fact that they see the democracy of Rhodes, which used to address you much more presumptuously than these, now become your suppliant, I consider a piece of good fortune for the State; but that these stupid men should neither consider this, though it is so plain to see, nor that you have often gone to the rescue of them one after another, and that you have been put to more trouble rectifying the errors of their rashness and infatuation, whenever they have chosen to make war on their own account, than in managing your own affairs, might well have aroused in you the profoundest wrath, it seems to me.

Perhaps, however, it is the destiny of these people never to be wise when prosperous.[*](The same charge is made in Dem. 15.16.) Still it is the fitting thing for you, because you are who you are and because of the past performance of the State, to make a point of demonstrating to all men that, as in former times, so now and always we prefer to practise justice, though certain others, wishing to enslave their own fellow-citizens, accuse them falsely before us.