On the Peace (11-15)

since they could not convert you to their way of thinking until they have first made clear what is for your advantage. But, apart from these considerations, how can men wisely pass judgement on the past or take counsel for the future unless they examine and compare the arguments of opposing speakers, themselves giving an unbiased hearing[*] to both sides?

But I marvel that the older men no longer recall and that the younger have not been told by anyone that the orators who exhort us to cling fast to peace have never caused us to suffer any misfortune whatsoever, whereas those who lightly espouse war have already plunged us into many great disasters. However, we have no memory for these facts but are always ready, without in the least advancing our own welfare, to man triremes, to levy war-taxes, and to lend aid to the campaigns of others or wage war against them, as chance may determine, as if imperilling the interests, not of our own, but of a foreign state.

And the cause of this condition of affairs is that, although you ought to be as much concerned about the business of the commonwealth as about your own, you do not feel the same interest in the one as in the other; on the contrary, whenever you take counsel regarding your private business you seek out as counsellors men who are your superiors in intelligence, but whenever you deliberate on the business of the state you distrust and dislike men of that character and cultivate, instead, the most depraved[*] of the orators who come before you on this platform; and you prefer as being better friends of the people those who are drunk[*] to those who are sober, those who are witless to those who are wise, and those who dole out the public money[*] to those who perform public services[*] at their own expense. So that we may well marvel that anyone can expect a state which employs such counsellors to advance to better things.

But I know that it is hazardous to oppose your views[*] and that, although this is a free government, there exists no ‘freedom of speech’[*] except that which is enjoyed in this Assembly by the most reckless orators, who care nothing for your welfare, and in the theater by the comic poets.[*] And, what is most outrageous of all, you show greater favor to those who publish the failings of Athens to the rest of the Hellenes than you show even to those who benefit the city, while you are as ill-disposed to those who rebuke and admonish you[*] as you are to men who work injury to the state.

Nevertheless, in spite of these conditions, I shall not desist from what I had in mind to say. For I have come before you, not to seek your favor nor to solicit your votes, but to make known the views I hold, first, regarding the proposals which have been put before you by the Prytaneis,[*] and, second, regarding the other interests of the state; for no good will come of the resolutions which have now been made regarding the peace[*] unless we are well advised also with regard to what remains to be done.