Exordia

I should have been glad, myself, to see you happy at putting into effect the measures going to profit you, that I might have been found both meeting your wishes and giving good advice. But since I see you about to try the opposite measures, I think I ought to speak against them, even if I shall be hated for it by certain persons. So, if you will not endure to hear even one word from me, you will be thought to be preferring such a course of action, not through an error of judgement, but through your natural propensity to do wrong. However, if you do listen, you may perhaps be won over to the other view, which I think would be most to your advantage. But if you refuse to listen, some will plead ignorance of what was advantageous, while others—well, what a man likes to say he will say.

In the first place, it is nothing strange, men of Athens, that among you are found some who, when action has to be taken, will speak against measures already voted.[*](The Assembly could vote at any time to reopen the debate. See Dem. Ex. 34.) Now, if they were doing this after you had given them the floor while still deliberating, it would be the right thing to denounce them for insisting upon speaking a second time to questions on which they had been defeated; as it is, there is nothing unreasonable in their desiring to express views which then you did not submit to hear,

and it is you who may well be criticized, men of Athens, because, when you deliberate about something, you do not allow each to say what he thinks, but, if the one side captures you first by their plea, you would hear no one from the other side. From this arises a situation embarrassing for you, because the men whose advice, before going wrong, you might have followed, you applaud later for denouncing your mistakes.