For the order had been passed to them that they were to elect ten men whom Theramenes indicated, ten more whom the overseers, just appointed, should demand, and ten from amongst those present. They were so aware of your weakness, and so sure of their own power, that they knew beforehand what would be transacted in the Assembly.

For this you should rely, not on my word, but on that of Theramenes; since everything that I have mentioned was stated by him in his defence before the Council,When he was accused by Critias, because of his moderate counsels, of being a traitor to the policy of the Thirty. when he reproached the exiles with the fact that they owed their restoration to him, and not to any consideration shown by the Lacedaemonians, and reproached also his partners in the government with this,—that although he had been himself responsible for all that had been transacted in the manner that I have described, he was treated in this fashion,—he who had given them many pledges by his actions, and to whom they were plighted by their oaths.

And it is for this man, responsible as we find him for all these and other injuries and ignominies, late as well as early, great as well as small, that theyi.e., people who speak in his favor. are going to have the audacity to proclaim their friendship; for Theramenes, who has suffered death, not as your champion, but as the victim of his own baseness, and has been justly punished under the oligarchy—he had already caused its ruin—as he would justly have been under democracy. Twice overFirst by supporting the Four Hundred, and then by joining the Thirty. did he enslave you, despising what was present,Democracy. and longing for what was absent,Oligarchy. and, while giving them the fairest name,i.e., his pretext of government by the best. setting himself up as instructor in most monstrous acts.

Well, I have dealt sufficiently with Theramenes in my accusation. You now have reached the moment in which your thoughts must have no room for pardon or for pity; when you must punish Eratosthenes and his partners in power. You should not show your superiority to the city’s foes in your fighting merely to show your inferiority to your own enemies in your voting.

Nor must you feel more gratitude to them for what they say that they mean to do than anger for what they have done; nor, while taking your measures against the Thirty in their absence,At Eleusis. acquit them in their presence; nor in your own rescue be more lax than fortune who has delivered these men into the hands of the city.