The greater part of the speech by which he threw dust in your eyes I will leave unnoticed; but, by alleging that the leaves of the crowns were rotten with age and falling off,—as though they were violet-leaves or rose-leaves, not leaves made of gold—he persuaded you to melt them down. And then, in providing for the collection of taxes, he had put in a clause that the public accountant should attend. That was very honest of him; only every taxpayer was certain to check the accounts. But in dealing with the crowns that he was to break up, he left out that very proper regulation; one and the same man was orator, goldsmith, business manager, and auditor of accounts.

Now if you, sir, had claimed our entire confidence in all your public business, your dishonesty would not have been equally manifest; but, seeing that in the matter of the taxes you laid down the just principle that the city must trust, not you, but her own servants, and then, when you took up another job and were tampering with the consecrated plate, some of it dedicated before we were born, you forgot to provide the precaution that was taken at your own instance in respect of the tax collection, is it not perfectly clear what you were aiming at? Of course it is.

Again, men of Athens, consider those glorious and enviable inscriptions that he has obliterated for all time, and the strange and blasphemous inscriptions that he has written in their stead. You all, I suppose, used to see the words written under the circlets of the crowns: The Allies to the Athenian People for valor and righteousness, or The Allies to the Goddess of Athens, a prize of victory; or, from the several states of the alliance, Such-and-such a City to the People by whom they were delivered, or, The liberated Euboeans, for example, crown the People; or again, Conon from the sea-fight with the Lacedaemonians. Such, I say, were the inscriptions of the crowns.