Antidosis (21-25)

In other states, when they try a man for his life, they cast a portion of the votes for the defendant,[*] but with us the accused has not even an equal chance with the sycophants;[*] nay, while we take our solemn oath at the beginning of each year that we will hear impartially both accusers and accused,

we depart so far from this in practice, that when the accuser makes his charges we give ear to whatever he may say; but when the accused endeavors to refute them, we sometimes do not endure even to hear his voice.[*] Those states in which an occasional citizen is put to death without a trial we condemn as unfit to live in, yet are blind to the fact that we are in the same case when we do not hear with equal good will both sides of the contest.

But what is most absurd of all is the fact that when one of us is on trial, he denounces the calumniators, but when he sits in judgement upon another, he is no longer of the same mind regarding them. Yet, surely, intelligent men ought to be such when they are judges of others, as they would expect others to be to them in like case, bearing in mind the fact that because of the audacity of the sycophants it is impossible to foresee what man may be placed in peril and be compelled to plead, even as I am now doing, before men who are to decide his fate by their votes.

Indeed no one may rely on the honesty of his life as a guarantee that he will be able to live securely in Athens; for the men who have chosen to neglect what is their own and to plot against what belongs to others do not keep their hands off citizens who live soberly and bring before you only those who do evil; on the contrary, they advertise their powers in their attacks upon men who are entirely innocent, and so get more money from those who are clearly guilty.[*]

This is exactly what Lysimachus had in mind when he subjected me to this trial; for he thought that this suit against me would bring him profit from other sources, and he expected that if he won in the debate with me, whom he calls the teacher of other men, everyone would regard his power as irresistible.