Exordia

I think you all know, men of Athens, that you have not come here today to put any of the wrongdoers on trial but to deliberate about the present state of affairs. So it is our duty to defer all accusations and only when we put someone on trial[*](The Assembly sometimes acted as a court, for example, in cases of treason.) should this or that man speak before you against another who, he has convinced himself, is an offender. But if anyone has something practical or profitable to say, now is the time to declare it. For accusation is for those who have fault to find with past actions, but in deliberative session the discussion is solely about present and future actions. Therefore the present is no occasion for abuse or blame but for taking counsel together, it seems to me. For this reason I shall try to guard against falling myself into the error which I condemn in these men and to offer the advice that I think best in the present state of affairs.

I think that no man will deny, men of Athens, that it is the mark of a disloyal citizen and a low-minded man so to hate or favour anyone who enters into public life that he takes no thought for the State’s best interests, but shapes his public utterances sometimes to vent his malice and sometimes to prove his friendship, as a number of those are doing who come forward here to speak. To these I would say no more than this: that in my opinion, if they have done something of the kind, their greatest offence is not this, but rather that they show themselves unprepared ever to stop doing it!