Exordia

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.

Surely if it had been some other people before whom these speeches about you were being made, I do not think these men would be finding it so easy to lie nor would the hearers have tolerated many of their assertions. But as things now are, I think that in general all and every take advantage of your simplicity and in particular these men have done so on the present occasion; for they have found in you such an audience for charges against yourselves as they would have found in no other people, as I know for a certainty.

And well may you, in my view, men of Athens, for this turn of events be grateful to the gods and detest these men.[*](Chians and Byzantines.) For the fact that they see the democracy of Rhodes, which used to address you much more presumptuously than these, now become your suppliant, I consider a piece of good fortune for the State; but that these stupid men should neither consider this, though it is so plain to see, nor that you have often gone to the rescue of them one after another, and that you have been put to more trouble rectifying the errors of their rashness and infatuation, whenever they have chosen to make war on their own account, than in managing your own affairs, might well have aroused in you the profoundest wrath, it seems to me.