On the Peace (126-130)

And yet Pericles,[*] who was the leader of the people before men of this stamp came into favor, taking over the state when it was less prudent than it had been before it obtained the supremacy, although it was still tolerably well governed, was not bent upon his own enrichment,[*] but left an estate which was smaller than that which he received from his father, while he brought up into the Acropolis eight thousand talents,[*] apart from the sacred treasures.

But these demagogues have shown themselves so different from him that they have the effrontery to say that because of the care they give to the commonwealth they are not able to give attention to their private interests, although in fact these “neglected” interests have advanced to a degree of affluence which they would never have even dreamed of praying to the gods that they might attain, whereas our people, for whom they pretend to care, are in such straits that not one of our citizens is able to live with pleasure or at ease; on the contrary, Athens is rife with lamentations.

For some are driven to rehearse and bewail amongst themselves their poverty and privation while others deplore the multitude of duties enjoined upon them by the state—the liturgies and all the nuisances connected with the symmories and with exchanges of property;[*] for these are so annoying that those who have means find life more burdensome than those who are continually in want.

I marvel that you cannot see at once that no class is so inimical to the people as our depraved orators and demagogues. For, as if your other misfortunes were not enough, their chief desire is that you should be in want of your daily necessities, observing that those who are able to manage their affairs from their private incomes are on the side of the commonwealth and of our best counsellors,

whereas those who live off the law-courts and the assemblies[*] and the doles derived from them are constrained by their need to be subservient to the sycophants and are deeply grateful for the impeachments and the indictments[*] and the other sharp practices which are due to the sycophants.