Against Ctesiphon (1-5)

You see, fellow citizens, how certain persons have been making their preparations for this case: how they have mustered their forces, and how they have gone begging up and down the market place, in the attempt to prevent the fair and orderly course of justice in the state. But I have come trusting first in the gods, then in the laws and in you, believing that with you no scheming preparation can override law and justice.

I could wish, indeed, fellow citizens, that the Senate of Five Hundred and the assemblies of the people were properly conducted by those who preside over them, and the laws enforced which Solon enacted to secure orderly conduct on the part of public speakers; for then it would be permitted to the oldest citizen, as the law prescribes, to come forward to the platform first, with dignity, and, uninterrupted by shouting and tumult, out of his experience to advise for the good of the state and it would then be permitted to all other citizens who wished, one by one in turn, in order of age, to express their opinion on every question; for so, I think, the state would be best governed, and least litigation would arise.

But now all our standards of orderly procedure have been set aside; there are men who do not hesitate to make illegal motions, and other men who are ready to put these motions to the vote—not men who have been chosen by right and lawful allotment to preside, but men who hold the position by trickery; and if any other senator does actually obtain the presidency by lot, and does honestly declare your votes, he is threatened with impeachment by men who no longer regard citizenship as a common right, but as their own private perquisite; men who are making slaves of the common people, and arrogating lordship to themselves;

men who have set aside the lawful processes of the courts, and carry their verdicts in the assembly by appeal to passion.[*] The result of all this is that we have ceased to hear that wisest and most judicious of all the proclamations to which the city was once accustomed, Who of the men above fifty years of age wishes to address the people, and then who of the other Athenians in turn. The disorder of the public men can no longer be controlled by the laws, nor by the prytanes, nor by the presiding officers, nor by the presiding tribe, the tenth part of the city.[*]

Under such circumstances, and in a political situation the gravity of which you yourselves understand, only one part of the constitution is left to us—if I too may lay claim to some discernment—the suits against illegal motions. But if you shall annul these also, or give way to those who are trying to annul them, I warn you that before you know it you will step by step have surrendered your rights to a faction.