Antidosis

And yet all sensible men would do well to pray the gods to endow as many of our people as possible with the power of getting means from abroad in order to make themselves serviceable to the city, even as I have done. But, though there are many anomalies in my situation, it would be the crowning absurdity of all if, when the men who have paid me money are so grateful to me that they are still even now devoted to me,

you on whom I have spent my means should desire to penalize me. It would be even more absurd if, whereas Pindar, the poet, was so highly honored by our forefathers because of a single line of his in which he praises Athens as “the bulwark of Hellas”[*](Of Pindar's encomium on Athens there is preserved a fragment (76 (46)): *)=W TAI\ LIPARAI\ KAI\ I)OSTE/FANOI KAI\ A)OI/DIMOI, *(ELLA/DOS E)/REISMA, KLEINAI\ *)AQA=NAI, DAIMO/NION PTOLI/EQRON “O splendid, violet-crowned, famed in song, glorious/ Athens, bulwark of Hellas, a wondrous city.”) that he was made ”proxenos“[*](”Friend of the city,“an honorary title conferred upon a foreigner by vote of the General Assembly, making him a sort of informal representative of Athens in his own country, and entitling him to special privileges and courtesies in Athens. See Gilbert, Greek Constitutional Antiquities pp. 181-182.) and given a present of ten thousand drachmas, I, on the other hand, who have glorified Athens and our ancestors with much ampler and nobler encomiums, should not even be privileged to end my days in peace.

With regard, then, to this as well as to the other charges of my accuser, I consider that the defense which I have made is a sufficient answer. Nevertheless, I am not going to hesitate to confide in you the truth as to how I now feel about the pending trial and how I felt about it at the first. I was very confident that for myself personally I could make out a good case;