Exordia

[*](The beginning of Dem. 14 is identical) Both parties seem to me to be in the wrong, men of Athens, both those who have supported the Arcadians and those who have supported the Spartans. For, just as if they had come here from one or the other of the two countries and were not of your own citizen body, to which both embassies are appealing, they are denouncing and abusing one another. This, however, was a concern of the visiting envoys, while to discuss the questions in the common interest and to consider your own interest without self-seeking is the duty of those who see fit to offer advice here in Athens.

Yet as things now are, if one could cancel the fact of their being known and their using the Attic speech, many people, I believe, would think the one group Arcadians and the other Spartans!

I know myself how difficult it is to propose the best procedure, for when you have been deceived and some of you want this and others that, if someone undertakes to suggest a compromise and then you do not wait to learn the facts, he will please neither party and will be put in the wrong with both sides.

Nevertheless, I shall choose to be thought to talk nonsense, if that, after all, is to be my fate, rather than to abandon you to certain people to be deceived in violation of what I consider best for you. And so, with your permission, I shall go into other details later, and proceed to explain what I think is best, starting from the premises upon which both sides agree.