For the Liberty of the Rhodians

but you, Athenians, have two struggles before you; one is the same that awaits the rest, but there is another and more serious struggle that comes before it, for you have got to defeat in your debates the faction that deliberately opposes the interests of your city. When, therefore, owing to this opposition, you can get nothing done without a struggle, the natural consequence is that you miss many advantages.

If, however, there are many politicians who recklessly take up this position, perhaps the pay they receive from their employers is chiefly responsible, but nevertheless you too must bear some of the blame. For you ought to have the same feeling about the post a man occupies in politics as about the post he occupies in war. What feeling do I refer to? You consider that the man who deserts the post where his general has stationed him deserves to be disfranchised and deprived of his share in our common privileges.

Then those who, by adopting oligarchical principles, abandon the post taken over by us from our ancestors, ought to be disqualified from ever giving you advice. As it is, you consider that those allies are most devoted to you who have sworn to regard your friends and your enemies as their own, but where politicians are concerned, you take as your most trusted advisers the men who, to your certain knowledge, have thrown in their lot with the enemies of the State.

But indeed it is not difficult to find matter of accusation against these politicians or of reproach against the rest of you, but our real task is to find by what arguments and by what course of action our present faults may be amended. Perhaps it does not suit the present occasion to deal with every side of the question, but if you can by some fitting action give effect to the policy you have adopted, then there might possibly be, step by step, a general improvement.

My own view is that you ought to grapple with these problems vigorously and act as becomes Athenians, remembering how gladly you hear a speaker praising your ancestors, describing their exploits and enumerating their trophies. Reflect, then, that your ancestors set up those trophies, not that you may gaze at them in wonder, but that you may also imitate the virtues of the men who set them up.