Exordia

As for yourselves, I give you this advice: do not be guilty of self-ruin and think it enough if you punish these men when you see fit; but, while holding them in check so far as lies in your power, you must yourselves, as becomes men deliberating on behalf of the State, put aside your own private feuds and aim at what is most to the common good, reflecting that the punishment of no individual, nor even of all the politicians in a body, can square the account if once the laws should be destroyed on which your very life depends.[*](Or, less probably, the laws of which you are in charge.)

Perhaps it might seem offensive to certain persons, men of Athens, if someone, an ordinary citizen and one of the common people like yourselves, should come forward after others who are eminent for both long political experience and reputation among you have already stated their opinions, and say that he thinks the others are not only wrong but not even near to discerning what ought to be done. Nevertheless, I feel so confident that I am going to give more profitable counsel than theirs that I shall not hesitate to declare all they have said to be worthless. I think that you too would be doing well if you kept in view, not the speaker, but the advice being offered. For the right thing, men of Athens, is to extend your goodwill, not to certain persons as though by hereditary privilege, but to those who from time to time offer the best counsel.

I should like you to listen attentively to what I am going to say, men of Athens; it is not unimportant. I wonder just why it is that, before we come up to the Assembly, any one of you whom a person may chance to meet is prepared to say readily by what means the present state of affairs may be improved; and then again, the minute you leave the Assembly, each man will be just as ready to say what we ought to do. But when we are met together and dealing with these problems, you hear anything rather than this from certain speakers.