What then is the cause of this? For not without reason, not without just cause, the Greeks of old were as eager for freedom as their descendants today are for slavery. There was something, men of Athens, something which animated the mass of the Greeks but which is lacking now, something which triumphed over the wealth of Persia, which upheld the liberties of Hellas, which never lost a single battle by sea or land, something the decay of which has ruined everything and brought our affairs to a state of chaos. And what was that?

It was nothing recondite or subtle, but simply that men who took bribes from those who wished to rule Greece or ruin her, were hated by all, and it was the greatest calamity to be convicted of receiving a bribe, and such a man was punished with the utmost severity and no intercession, no pardon was allowed.

At each crisis, therefore, the opportunity for action, with which fortune often equips the careless against the vigilant and those who shrink from deeds against those who fulfil their duties, could not be bought at a price from our politicians or our generals; no, nor our mutual concord, nor our distrust of tyrants and barbarians, nor, in a word, any such advantage.

Now, however, all these things have been sold in open market, and in place of them we have imported vices which have infected Greece with a mortal sickness. And what are those vices? Envy of the man who has secured his gains; contempt for him who confesses; pardon for those who are convicted hatred for him who censures such dealings; and every other vice that goes hand in hand with corruption.

For war-galleys, men in abundance, money and material without stint, everything by which one might gauge the strength of our cities, these we as a body possess today in number and quantity far beyond the Greeks of former times. But all our resources are rendered useless, powerless, worthless by these traffickers.