On the Trierarchic Crown

and they bid you grant them a favor, as if the argument were about a gift instead of a prize, or as if you, at the instance of men like them, were seeking to win the favor of those who neglect your interests, and as if it were not rather your duty, at the instance of better men, to show favor to those who serve you as they should. Then again, they care so little for a good reputation, and are so thoroughly of the opinion that everything is of secondary importance compared with gain, that they not only have the audacity to contradict in their public speeches what they said before, but even now their statements do not agree; for they assert that the trireme which is to win the crown should have its proper crew on board, yet they bid you crown the trierarchs who have let their service devolve upon others.

And they state that no one got his ship in readiness before my opponents did, yet they bid you crown us jointly, which is not what the decree orders. I am as far from granting this as I am from having let out my trierarchy; I would not submit to the one, nor have I done the other. They pretend to be pleading in the interests of justice, but they show more zeal than any one of you would do without reward, as though their duty was to earn their pay, not to give an opinion.