Exordia

As for the problems now confronting the State, men of Athens, even though things are not as they should be, I do not consider it altogether difficult to discover by what action one may effect an improvement. I judge, on the other hand, that the manner in which I must speak to you about them means very grave irritation; not because you will fail to understand what a person will say but because you seem to me to have become so accustomed to hearing many untruths and anything rather than what best meets your needs, that I fear it may be the lot of the man who now makes the best proposal to earn for his reward at your hands the hostility which would properly have been the due of those who have deceived you.

For I observe that often you hate, not those who are to blame for your troubles, but those who have most recently made mention of them to you.[*](Cf. Dem. 1.16.) Nevertheless, although I am so precisely measuring this hazard, I still think that I must put all other subjects aside and confine myself to saying what I think is the best advice about the present situation.

I should have wished, men of Athens, that you treat yourselves with that benevolence which you are accustomed to practise toward all other peoples. As it now is, you are better at rectifying the woes of others than you are at taking to heart the troubles which befall yourselves. Someone may perhaps say, of course, that this is exactly what brings the greatest glory to the State—to have deliberately chosen to assume many risks for the sake of sheer justice with no thought of selfish advantage. Now, while I for one believe this reputation which prevails concerning the State to be true and desire it to be, yet I assume it also to be an obligation of prudent men to exercise as much foresight in their domestic affairs as in those of strangers, so that you may show yourselves to be not only men of goodwill but sensible also.