On the Crown (261-265)

After getting yourself enrolled on the register of your parish—no one knows how you managed it; but let that pass—anyhow, when you were enrolled, you promptly chose a most gentlemanly occupation, that of clerk and errand-boy to minor officials. After committing all the offences with which you now reproach other people, you were relieved of that employment; and I must say that your subsequent conduct did no discredit to your earlier career.

You entered the service of those famous players Simylus and Socrates, better known as the Growlers. You played small parts to their lead, picking up figs and grapes and olives, like an orchard-robbing costermonger, and making a better living out of those missiles than by all the battles that you fought for dear life. For there was no truce or armistice in the warfare between you and your audiences, and your casualties were so heavy, that no wonder you taunt with cowardice those of us who have no experience of such engagements.

However, passing by things for which your poverty may be blamed, I will address myself to actual charges against your way of living. When in course of time it occurred to you to enter public life, you chose such a line of political action that, so long as the city prospered, you lived the life of a hare, in fear and trembling and constant expectation of a sound thrashing for the crimes that burdened your conscience: although, when every one else is in distress, your confidence is manifest to all men.[*]

What treatment does a man, who recovered his high spirits on the death of a thousand of his fellow-citizens, deserve at the hands of the survivors? I shall omit a great many other facts that I might relate; for I do not think that I ought to recount glibly all his discreditable and infamous qualities, but only such as I may mention without discredit to myself.

And now, Aeschines, I beg you to examine in contrast, quietly and without acrimony, the incidents of our respective careers: and then ask the jury, man by man, whether they would choose for themselves your fortune or mine. You were an usher, I a pupil; you were an acolyte, I a candidate; you were clerk-at-the-table, I addressed the House; you were a player, I a spectator; you were cat-called, I hissed; you have ever served our enemies, I have served my country.