Exordia

Most of all I should desire, men of Athens, that you be convinced by the words I am about to utter, but if after all it should turn out otherwise, I should prefer above all else that by me, at least, they had been spoken.

It is a difficult thing, as it seems, not only to explain to you what ought to be done, but even to discover it by solitary reflection. Anyone would observe this if he believed you would consider, not his speech, but the business upon which you are engaged, and set more value upon being thought an honest man than upon showing himself to be a clever speaker.

I, at any rate,—so help me Heaven—after it occurred to me to reflect upon our present problems, began to hit upon themes, and no end of them, to which you would have listened not without pleasure. For instance, on the theme You are the most just of the Greeks, I observed and now observe many changes to ring, and again, You are born of the noblest ancestors, and many such topics.[*](These were stock topics of funeral speeches: see Dem. 60 and the Introduction to the same) Yet these themes, though affording pleasure so long as they are being aired, after that vanish away;

and it is the duty of the speaker to show himself the adviser of some course of action through which the gain of some real benefit shall also afterwards accrue to you.[*](Cf. Dem. 8.73.) Such a policy as this I know by now from experience to be rare and hard to discover. Neither is it enough merely to get a vision of such policies unless a man shall also be able to convince you, who jointly are to assume the responsibility. On the contrary, there is an obligation resting upon both alike, upon me to tell you what I have convinced myself is advantageous, upon you to listen, to judge and, if it is your pleasure, to adopt.