Against Flaccus (16-20)

When, therefore, Flaccus learnt that he too was put to death, he utterly abandoned all other hope for the future, and was no longer able to apply himself to public affairs as he had done before, being enervated and wholly broken down in spirit.

But when a magistrate begins to despair of his power of exerting authority, it follows inevitably, that his subjects

And being placed in a situation of great and perplexing difficulty he began to rage, and simultaneously, with the change of his disposition for the worse, he also altered everything which had existed before, beginning with his nearest friends and his most habitual customs; for he began to suspect and to drive from him those who were well affected to him, and who were most sincerely his friends, and he reconciled himself to those who were originally his declared enemies, and he used them as advisers under all circumstances;

but they, for they persisted in their ill-will, being reconciled with him only in words and in appearance, but in their actions and in their hearts they bore him incurable enmity, and though only pretending a genuine friendship towards him, like actors in a theatre, they drew him over wholly to their side; and so the governor became a subject, and the subjects became the governor, advancing the most unprofitable opinions, and immediately confirming and insisting upon them;

for they became executors of all the plans which they had devised, treating him like a mute person on the stage, as one who was only, by way of making up the show, inscribed with the title of authority, being themselves a lot of Dionysiuses, demagogues, and of Lampos, a pack of cavillers and word-splitters; and of Isidoruses, sowers of sedition, busy-bodies, devisers of evil, troublers of the state; for this is the name which has, at last, been given to them.