Exordia

I should have thought, men of Athens, that no one who has a clean conscience about the measures taken would prefer a complaint against those who move to bring these matters to an accounting; for the more often one examines into them, the more the authors of them are bound to grow in esteem. These men themselves, however, seem to me to render it manifest that they have not acted with the State’s interests in view. At any rate, just as if they were bound to be found guilty if they should come again to an accounting, they assume the defensive and say we are acting outrageously. And yet when you accuse of outrageous conduct those who wish to investigate, what are we citizens to say of those who in that very transaction have perpetrated a fraud against our own selves?