Antidosis (141-145)

For when I was indicted, I pondered these very matters, as any one of you would have done, and I reviewed my life and my actions, dwelling longest on the things for which I thought I deserved approbation. But one of my associates, hearing me, made bold to urge an objection which was amazing in the extreme; he stated that while my life as I described it was worthy of emulation, yet he himself greatly feared that my story would irritate many of my hearers.

“Some men,” he said, “have been so brutalized by envy and want and are so hostile that they wage war, not on depravity, but on prosperity; they hate not only the best men but the noblest pursuits; and, in addition to their other faults, they take sides with wrong-doers and are in sympathy with them, while they destroy, whenever they have the power, those whom they have cause to envy.

They do these things, not because they are ignorant of the issues on which they are to vote, but because they intend to inflict injury and do not expect to be found out;[*] and so, by protecting those of their own kind, they think they are providing for their own safety. “I have told you this in order that, being forewarned, you may be able to handle your case to better advantage and to use less dangerous arguments before the jury. For as things are, what judgement can you expect such men to reach when you tell them of your life and your conduct, which are not in the least degree like their own, but such as you are attempting to describe to me?

For you show that the speeches which you have written merit, not blame, but the highest favor; that the men who have been under your instruction have in no case been guilty of wrong-doing or of crime, while some of them have been crowned by the city in recognition of their worth; that from day to day you, yourself, have lived so uprightly and lawfully that I know not who of your fellow-citizens can compare with you; and that, furthermore, you have never brought anyone to trial nor stood trial yourself[*] save in the matter of an exchange of property, nor have you appeared as counsel or as witness for others, nor have you engaged in any other of the activities which make up the civic life of all Athenians.

And to these peculiarities and idiosyncrasies you add another, namely, that you have held aloof from the public offices and the emoluments which go with them, and from all other privileges of the commonwealth as well, while you have enrolled not only yourself but your son[*] among the twelve hundred who pay the war-taxes and bear the liturgies, and you and he have three times discharged the trierarchy, besides having performed the other services more generously and handsomely than the laws require.[*]