Against Ergocles (11-15)

Well, of one thing you may be assured, men of Athens: whoever in this serious stringency of your affairs either betrays your cities or decides to steal your money or receive bribes, is the very man to surrender your walls and your ships to the enemy, and to establish oligarchy in place of democracy. It is not right, then, that you should be mastered by their devices: you should rather make an example for all men to see, and regard neither profit nor pity nor aught else as more important than the punishment of these men.

Those who, longing for liberty and justice, desiring the maintenance of the laws and hating wrongdoers, shared in your dangers, I do not regard as bad citizens, nor would it be unfair, I say, that the exile of that party should be reckoned into their account. But those who, after their return, do injury to your people under a democracy, and enlarge their private properties at your expense, deserve to feel your wrath far more than the Thirty.

The latter were elected for the very purpose of doing you harm by any available means, whereas you have entrusted yourselves to these men in order that they may promote the greatness and freedom of the city. Nothing of the sort have you secured: so far as they could, they have involved you in the most awful dangers; and hence you would be far more justified in pitying yourselves, your children and your wives than these men, when you think of the ravages that you suffer at such hands as theirs.

For, just when we are convinced that we have salvation in our grasp, we meet with more terrible treatment from our officers than from the enemy. Of course you all understand that you have no hope of salvation if you undergo a reverse.[*] You ought therefore to exhort yourselves to impose on these men today the extreme penalty, and to make it evident to the rest of Greece that you punish the guilty and mean to reform your officers.