Exordia (55.3-56.2)

For you are the worst people for taking away the offices that fall to your class, and for enacting laws about them if someone serves twice as commissioner of police[*] or something of the sort, but you allow the same men to be generals all the time.[*] There is perhaps some excuse for allowing those engaged in the active services to continue, but to allow the others, who, though doing nothing, have an endless tenure of office and are themselves endlessly benefited is folly.[*] Instead, you ought to bring in some of your own number, and there are not a few of you. For if you set up a standard, as it were, anyone who is worth anything will thereafter come forward of his own accord.

It seems to me a fine and seemly thing, men of Athens, for a man who has convinced himself he has something profitable to say to take the floor, but I consider it altogether shameful to force people to listen against their will. And I think, if you will but take my advice today, you will be better able both to choose the best measures and to shorten the speeches of those who come to the platform.

What, then, do I advise? First of all, men of Athens, to require the man who comes forward to confine himself to the matters you are considering. For otherwise someone may embrace many other topics in his speech and say many witty things, especially those who are smart at it, as some of these are. Well, if you have come here to listen to fine phrases, the thing to do is to make them and listen to them, but if you have come to deliberate about a choice of measures, I urge you to judge the measures strictly by themselves, eliminating all passages of a nature to mislead.