Against Timocrates

Demosthenes

Demosthenes. Vol. III. Orations, XXI-XXVI. Vince, J. H., translator. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1935 (printing).

Also it is so much easier to curry favour privately with certain persons than to stand up in defence of your rights that, while Timocrates has their fee in his pocket, and never introduced his law until he got it, I,so far from getting any reward from you, am risking a thousand drachmas in your defence.

Now it is the common practice of those who take up any piece of public business to inform you that the matter on which they happen to be making their speeches is most momentous, and worthy of your best attention. But if that claim has ever been made with propriety, I think that I am entitled to make it now.