Against The Corn-Dealers (11-15)

If they were doing this for your benefit, they ought to have been found selling it at the same price for a number of days, until the stock that they had bought up was exhausted. But in fact they were selling at a profit of a drachma[*] several times in the same day, as though they were buying by the medimnus[*] at a time. I adduce you as witnesses of this.

And it seems to me a strange thing that, when they have to contribute to a special levy of which everyone is to have knowledge, they refuse, making poverty their pretext; but illegal acts, for which death is the penalty, and in which secrecy was important to them, — these they assert that they committed in kindness to you. Yet you are all aware that they are the last persons to whom such statements are appropriate.

For their interests are the opposite of other men’s: they make most profit when, on some bad news reaching the city, they sell their corn at a high price. And they are so delighted to see your disasters that they either get news of them in advance of anyone else, or fabricate the rumor themselves; now it is the loss of your ships in the Black Sea, now the capture of vessels on their outward voyage by the Lacedaemonians, now the blockade of your trading ports, or the impending rupture of the truce; and they have carried their enmity to such lengths that they choose the same critical moments as your foes to overreach you.

For, just when you find yourselves worst off for corn, these persons snap it up and refuse to sell it, in order to prevent our disputing about the price: we are to be glad enough if we come away from them with a purchase made at any price, however high. And thus at times, although there is peace, we are besieged by these men.