Antidosis

But what is most absurd of all is the fact that when one of us is on trial, he denounces the calumniators, but when he sits in judgement upon another, he is no longer of the same mind regarding them. Yet, surely, intelligent men ought to be such when they are judges of others, as they would expect others to be to them in like case, bearing in mind the fact that because of the audacity of the sycophants it is impossible to foresee what man may be placed in peril and be compelled to plead, even as I am now doing, before men who are to decide his fate by their votes.

Indeed no one may rely on the honesty of his life as a guarantee that he will be able to live securely in Athens; for the men who have chosen to neglect what is their own and to plot against what belongs to others do not keep their hands off citizens who live soberly and bring before you only those who do evil; on the contrary, they advertise their powers in their attacks upon men who are entirely innocent, and so get more money from those who are clearly guilty.[*](Compare the opposite ideal in Isoc. 7.24; Isoc. 4.76; Isoc. 12.145 ff.)