On His Return (8)

Of the alternatives before me, then, I chose that which meant years of sorrow for myself, but immediate release for you from the distress of the moment. Remember your peril: remember your helplessness: remember how you stood in such fear of one another that you ceased going abroad even into the Agora, because you each expected arrest.[*] That such a state of things should have occurred at all proved to be due only in small part to me; that it ended, on the other hand, proved to be due to me alone.