For Polystratus

Hence in most cases they completely lost heart, since those who were not banished were executed. Those among them who engaged to obey and refrain from plotting and reporting, they placed in power. Thus a change of government would have been no easy thing for you. It is not fair, then, to punish people for matters in which they showed their loyalty to you.

And I consider it monstrous that the same treatment meted out to those who proposed measures concerning your people that were not to its highest advantage should also be applied to the man who proposed nothing, and who in seventy years has committed no offence against you, let alone eight days! Those who spent their whole lives in knavery have appeared as honest men before the auditors, because they have tampered with their accusers; while those who were always honest towards you—they are the knaves.

Now, in their previous prosecution, among other lying charges that they made against my father, they stated that Phrynichus[*](An active member of the oligarchy of Four Hundred (411 B.C.); cf. Lys. 13.70, Against Agoratus.) was a relation of his. Well, let anyone, if he pleases, bear witness, in the time allowed for my speech, that there was kinship with Phrynichus. But, of course, their accusation was a lie. Nor, indeed, was he a friend of his by upbringing; for Phrynichus was a poor man, and kept sheep in the fields, while my father was being educated in town.

On attaining manhood he looked after his farm, while Phrynichus came to town and became a slander-monger; so that the characters of the two were not at all compatible. And when Phrynichus had to pay a fine to the Treasury, my father did not bring him his contribution of money: yet it is in such cases that we see the best proof of a man’s friends. If he was of the same township, that is no reason why my father deserves to suffer,—