Now, to preclude him from deceiving you with lies, I will give you clear information at once on these points also, since I shall not be at liberty afterwards to come forward in this place and expose him. Please call Diotimus of AcharnaeThe principal township of Attica, 7 miles north of Athens. and those who were appointed with him to arm the townsmen as infantry from the funds then contributed.

Testimony of Diotimus and those Appointed With HimSo this man had no intention of aiding the city in such a moment, in such a position of her affairs; his purpose was to make a profit out of your disasters. For he set out from Oropus, going sometimes alone and sometimes at the head of others who took your misfortunes as so much good fortune, and so traversed the countryside:

where he met with the most elderly citizens who had stayed behind in their townships with scanty supplies that barely sufficed them,—men who were attached to the democracy, but unable owing to their age to give it their support,—he stripped them of their resources, thinking it more important to make his own petty gains than to spare them injury. It is not possible for all these to prosecute him today, from the very same cause that disabled them from supporting the city:

yet this man ought not to benefit twice from their disability, and be helped thereby to pass your present scrutiny as he was before to rob them of what they had. Nay, if but a single one of those whom he has wronged appears in court, make much of it, and utterly detest this man, who could bring himself to strip of their resources those on whom other men, out of pity for their straits, freely bestowed something from their own. Pray call the witnesses.

WitnessesWell now, I do not see how your judgement of him should differ from that of his own people; for the facts are of such a nature that, even if he had committed no other offence, they would alone justify his rejection. The strange things of which his mother accused him while she was alive I will pass over; but on the evidence of the measures that she took at the close of her life you can easily judge how he treated her.