85
If you heard the slanderous language that he used against you, as he paraded the market-place, you would hate him even more than you do, and with justice. For he says there are many men in debt to the treasury, and all of them in the same case as himself. I admit that these unfortunate men are many, though there are but a couple of them; for every state-debtor is one too many,Lit. They are more by everyone than is right. and no others ought to be in debt to the State. But I solemnly swear that their case is not the same as the defendant’s, nor anything like it, but quite the contrary. Look at it in this way.
86
And do not imagine, Athenians, that I am debating the point with you, as if you were debtors to the treasury. That is not so, and I hope it never may be; it is no idea of mine. But if any of you has a friend or acquaintance among the debtors, I propose to show you that for that friend’s sake he ought to hate the defendant.
86
My first reason is that honest folk, who are hampered by security for others and kind offices and private debts involving no wrong to the State, but who happen to have been unlucky, are placed by him in the same infamous category as himself, contrary to what is right and fitting.
