Areopagiticus

have nevertheless expressed the opinion that you could not be persuaded to adopt it, but that, because you have grown accustomed to the present order, you would prefer to continue a wretched existence under it rather than enjoy a better life under a stricter polity; and they warned me that I even ran the risk, although giving you the very best advice, of being thought an enemy of the people and of seeking to turn the state into an oligarchy.[*](The ready retort of demagogues to any critic of ochlocracy. See Isoc. 15.318 and note; Aristoph. Pl. 570.)

Well, if I were proposing a course which was unfamiliar and not generally known, and if I were urging you to appoint a committee or a commission[*](The very word (suggrafei=s) which was used of the board of twenty men appointed to make recommendations of a change in the constitution before the establishment of the oligarchy of the Four Hundred, 411 B.C.) to consider it, which was the means through which the democracy was done away with before, there might be some reason for this charge. I have, however, proposed nothing of the kind, but have been discussing a government whose character is hidden from no one, but evident to all—

one which, as you all know, is a heritage from our fathers, which has been the source of numberless blessings both to Athens and to the other states of Hellas, and which was, besides, ordained and established by men who would be acknowledged by all the world to have been the best friends of the people[*](Those who did, not what the people liked, but what was for their good. So Solon is called dhmokw/tatos, Isoc. 7.16.) among the citizens of Athens; so that it would be of all things most absurd if I, in seeking to introduce such a polity, should be suspected of favoring revolution.

Furthermore, it is easy to judge of my purpose from the fact that in most of the discourses[*](See especially Isoc. 4.105 ff.; General Introduction p. xxxviii.) which I have written, you will find that I condemn oligarchies and special privileges, while I commend equal rights and democratic governments—not all of them, but those which are well-ordered, praising them not indiscriminately, but on just and reasonable grounds.