The difficulty that faces me, gentlemen of the jury, is not in beginning my accusation, but in bringing my speech to an end: so enormous, so numerous are the acts they have committed, that neither could lying avail one to accuse them of things more monstrous than the actual facts, nor with every desire to speak mere truth could one tell the whole; of necessity either the accuser must be tired out or his time must run short.

It seems to me that our positions will be the reverse of what they were in former times: for previously the accusers had to explain their enmity towards the defendants; but in the present case inquiry must be made of the defendants as to the motive of their enmity towards the city in committing such audacious offences against her. It is not, in deed, from any lack of private enmities and sufferings that I make these remarks, but because of the abundant reasons that all of us have for anger on personal grounds, or in the interest of the public.

Now as for myself, gentlemen, having never engaged in any suit either on my own account or on that of others, I have now been compelled by what has occurred to accuse this man: hence I have been often overcome with a great feeling of despondency, from a fear lest my inexperience might cause me to fail in making a worthy and able accusation on my brother’s and on my own behalf. Nevertheless I will try to inform you of the matter from the beginning, as briefly as I can.

My father Cephalus was induced by Pericles to come to this country,From Syracuse. and dwelt in it for thirty years: never did he, any more than we,i.e., his sons, Polemarchus, Lysias and Euthydemus. appear as either prosecutor or defendant in any case whatever, but our life under the democracy was such as to avoid any offence against our fellows and any wrong at their hands.

When the Thirty, by the evil arts of slander-mongers, were established in the government, and declared that the city must be purged of unjust men and the rest of the citizens inclined to virtue and justice, despite these professions they had the effrontery to discard them in practice, as I shall endeavor to remind you by speaking first of my own concerns, and then of yours.