Against Eratosthenes (96-100)

In return you should feel the same anger as when you were exiles, and remember besides the other injuries that you suffered from these men, who with violent hands snatched some from the market-place, and some from the temples, and put them to death; while others they tore from their children, their parents and their wives, and compelled to self-slaughter, and then did not even allow them to be given the customary burial, conceiving their own authority to be proof against the vengeance of Heaven.

As many as escaped death encountered danger in many places, and wandered to many cities, and were banished from each refuge: in want of subsistence, having left behind you your children either in your native land, now turned hostile, or else on foreign soil, you came, despite many adversities, to the Peiraeus. Beset by many great perils, you proved yourselves men of true valor, and liberated one party while restoring the other to their native land.

If you had been unfortunate, and had failed of these achievements, in your turn you would have gone into exile through fear of more afflictions like the past, and owing to the methods of these men you would have found no shelter from your wrongs in either temples or altars, where even wrongdoers are secure. Of your children, as many as were here would have been foully assaulted by these men, while those in foreign parts would have been enslaved for petty debts, cut off from all possible assistance.

I fancy that they are listening to us, and will know you by the vote that you give; they will feel that those of you who acquit these men will have passed sentence of death on them, while those who inflict the merited penalty will have acted as their avengers. I will here conclude my accusation. You have heard, you have seen, you have suffered; you have them: give judgement.