25
You will do well to remember also the events that followed the rule of the Four HundredJune-September, 411 B.C.; for you will fully realize that the measures advised by these men have never brought you any advantage, while those that I recommend have always profited both parties in the State. You know that Epigenes, Demophanes and Cleisthenes, while reaping their personal gains from the city’s misfortunes, have inflicted the heaviest losses on the public weal.
26
For they prevailed on you to condemn several men to death without trial, to confiscate unjustly the property of many more, and to banish and disfranchise other citizens; since they were capable of taking money for the release of offenders, and of appearing before you to effect the ruin of the innocent. They did not stop until they had involved the city in seditions and the gravest disasters, while raising themselves from poverty to wealth.
27
But your temper moved you to welcome back the exiles, to reinstate the disfranchised in their rights, and to bind yourselves by oaths to concord with the rest. At the end of it all, you would have been more pleased to punish those who traded in slander under the democracy than those who held office under the oligarchy. And with good reason, gentlemen: for it is manifest now to all that the unjust acts of rulers in an oligarchy produce democracy, whereas the trade of slanderers in the democracy has twice led to the establishment of oligarchy. It is not right, therefore, to hearken many times to the counsels of men whose advice has not even once resulted in your profit.
