On the Peace (71-75)

If I were attempting to discourse in this manner before any others, I should naturally lay myself open to this charge. But now I am addressing myself to you, not with the wish that I may prejudice you in the eyes of others, but with the desire that I may cause you to make an end of such a policy and that Athens and the rest of the Hellenes may form a lasting peace.

But those who admonish and those who denounce cannot avoid using similar words, although their purposes are as opposite as they can be.[*] You ought not, therefore, to have the same feeling towards all who use the same language but, while abhorring those who revile you to your harm as inimical to the state, you ought to commend those who admonish you for your good and to esteem them as the best of your fellow-citizens,

and him most of all, even among them, who is able to point out most vividly the evils of your practices and the disasters which result from them. For such a man can soonest bring you to abhor what you should abhor and to set your hearts on better things. These, then, are the things which I have to say in defense of my harshness both in the words which I have spoken and those which I am about to speak. I will now resume at the place where I left off.

For I was on the point of saying that you could best learn that it is not to your advantage to obtain the empire of the sea if you should consider what was the condition of Athens before she acquired this power and what after she obtained it. For if you will examine one condition in contrast with the other you will see how many evils this power has brought upon the city.

Now the polity as it was in the earlier time was as much better and stronger than that which obtained later as Aristides and Themistocles and Miltiades[*] were better men than Hyperbolus[*] and Cleophon[*] and those who today harangue the people.[*] And you will find that the people who then governed the state were not given over to slackness and poverty and empty hopes,[*]