39
For the case stands thus. If you dismiss this impeachment, they are all acquitted and not a single one of them will pay the penalty, for who henceforth would give his verdict against them when you have crowned the Council of which they were the leading spirits? But if you convict, in the first place you will have kept your judicial oath; and further, when you have each of these men before you at their audit, anyone whom you think guilty you will punish; and anyone who is not, then will be the time to acquit him. Do not, therefore, accept their words as spoken on behalf of the Council and of the general public, but be incensed against them as impostors defending their own interests.
40
Again, I expect that Archias, of the deme of Cholargas,—for he too was a Councillor last year-will plead on their behalf in his character of respectable citizen. But I suggest that you should meet his plea in some such way as this. Ask him whether the conduct with which the Council are charged seems to him honorable or the reverse, and if he says honorable, pay him no longer the attention due to a respectable man; if he says dishonorable, ask him a second question: why did he let it pass, if he claims to be a respectable man?
41
If he says that he spoke against it but could persuade no one, surely it is ridiculous for him now to defend this Council that rejected all his excellent advice; but if he says that he held his tongue, is he not guilty of an injustice if he neglected his chance of dissuading them from the offence they were contemplating, and yet ventures now to say that having actually done so much evil they deserve to be crowned?
