Exordia

No small detriment you would esteem it, as I believe, men of Athens, if some offensive opinion and discreditable to the city should come to prevail abroad. Now then, right as you are in this judgement, your actions in general are not consistent with it; but time and again you are misled into doing things that not even you yourselves would say are honorable. And while I am aware that all men receive with more pleasure those who praise than those who rebuke, yet I do not think it right in quest of this goodwill to say anything but what I judge to be in your interests.[*](Cf. Dem. 1.16.)

If, then, at the outset your judgement had been sound, there would have been no need to assume that as a body you must do what as individuals you condemn, so that this very thing should not be happening which is now going on. While every man goes about saying How disgraceful, how shocking! and How long will this business go on?, every man sitting here with you is himself one of those who do such things. As for me, I should certainly have wished that, just as I know it pays you to listen to the speaker who makes the best proposals, so I might be sure it would also pay the one who made them; for so I should be much happier.[*](This clause is found also in Dem. 4.51.) As it now is, I have fears; nevertheless, I shall not be deterred from saying what I am confident will prove to be best, even if you shall not be convinced.

Even if the speaker were one who had never spoken on another subject before you, men of Athens, surely now, discussing the groundless charges which the ambassadors[*](Chians, Byzantines and Rhodians. See. Dem. 15.3 and the Introduction to that oration.) bring against the State, he might well, I think, meet with indulgence from all.

For in certain other contests to be worsted by one’s adversaries may seem to be not so much a reproach as a misfortune, because luck and the officials in charge and many other factors play a part in the winning or the losing of a contest; but in the event of men having no self-justification to offer worthy of the merits of their case we shall find the reproach of those found in this plight to attach to nothing but their intelligence.