16
I think, however, that even if there had been neither arbitration nor witnesses to the actual facts and you were under the necessity of considering the case in the light of the probabilities, not even in this event would you have difficulty in arriving at a just verdict. For if I were so audacious a man as to wrong others, you would with good reason condemn me as doing wrong to him also; but as it is, I shall be found innocent of having harmed any citizen in regard to his property, or of jeopardizing his life, or of having expunged his name from the list of active citizens, or of having inscribed his name on Lysander’s list.A list of citizens who were deprived of their civic rights; cf. Isoc. 21.2 and Xen. Hell. 2.3.17-19.
17
And yet the wickedness of the ThirtyFor the crimes of the Thirty see the vivid account by Lysias in his speech Against Eratosthenes. impelled many to act in this way for they not only did not punish the evil-doers but they even commanded some persons to do wrong. So as for me, not even when they had control of the government, shall I be found guilty of any such misdeed; yet Callimachus says that he was wronged after the Thirty had been expelled, the Piraeus had been taken, and when the democracy was in power, and the terms of reconciliation were being discussed.
18
And yet do you think that a man who was well behaved under the Thirty put off his wrongdoing until that period when even those who had formerly transgressed were repentant? But the most absurd thing of all would be this—that although I never saw fit to avenge myself on anyone of my existing enemies, I was attempting to injure this man with whom I have never had any business dealings at all!
