3
Now while all other men, I observe, stand ready to submit to an accounting at any time, whenever they are confident that some measure of theirs has been honestly put through,This principle was invoked against Aeschines: Dem. 19.2. yet these men, on the contrary, resent it if you desire now to reverse your action in matters wherein you have made a mistake, thinking their deception ought to prevail rather than spend time on an inquiry. So, even if the majority of you are perhaps not unaware of pressure on the part of these men, it is still one’s duty, once he has been given the floor, to declare what action he thinks best under the circumstances.
1
Whatever measure is going to benefit the whole State, men of Athens, I pray that all speakers will propose and you will adopt. I, at any rate, shall say what I have persuaded myself is most to your advantage, asking only this of you—that you neither consider those who urge you to take the field to be for this reason brave, nor those who undertake to oppose them to be for this reason cowards; for the test of speech and the test of action, men of Athens, are not the same; rather we must now show ourselves to have been wise in counsel and later, if in the end this proposal is adopted, display the deeds of courage.
2
Your enthusiasm, I allow, is worthy of all praise and such as a man of goodwill toward the State might pray for; but the more intense your enthusiasm the more foresighted you should now be to employ it as you ought. For you know that no choice of a course of action justifies itself unless the end it achieves be beneficial and honorable. I am sure I once heard here in your presence, men of Athens, a man who was thought to be lacking neither in sense nor in experience of war.
