148
To contrast the two men, let us ask who Meidias is and to whom he displayed his qualities. Do not then imagine that for you, gentlemen, being the descendants of such ancestors, it would be in accordance with justice or piety, to say nothing of honor, if, when you have caught a rascally, violent bully, a mere nobody and son of nobody, you should pronounce him deserving of pardon or pity or favour of any kind. For why should you? Because of his services as general? But not even as a private soldier, much less as a leader of others, is he worth anything at all. For his speeches then? In his public speeches he never yet said a good word of anyone, and he speaks ill of everyone in private.
149
For the sake of his family perhaps? And who of you does not know the mysterious story of his birth—quite like a melodrama? He was the sport of two opposing circumstances. The real mother who bore him was the most sensible of mortals; his reputed mother who adopted him was the silliest woman in the world. Do you ask why? The one sold him as soon as he was born; the other purchased him, when she might have got a better bargain at the same figure.
150
And yet, though he has thus become the possessor of privileges to which he has no claim, and has found a fatherland which is reputed to be of all states the most firmly based upon its laws, he seems utterly unable to submit to those laws or abide by them. His true, native barbarism and hatred of religion drive him on by force and betray the fact that he treats his present rights as if they were not his own—as indeed they are not.
