5
For on the one hand, whenever any officials have been rejected by vote, they instantly cease to hold office and are stripped of their official crowns; and on the other hand, all the judicial archons who are disqualified for promotion to the Areopagus forbear to force their way in and submit humbly to your decision. And this is only reasonable; for just as they believe that private citizens ought to obey them when they are rulers, so when they in their turn descend to the rank of private citizens, they ought to submit to the laws, which are the real rulers of the State.
6
Again, all the statesmen, if you will pass them in review from the earliest times, can be proved to have submitted in the same way to your constitutional decrees. It is said that Aristeides was banished by your ancestors and lived in Aegina till the people recalled him, and that Miltiades and Pericles, being fined thirty and fifty talents respectively, did not try to harangue the people until they had paid in full.
7
It would be a most scandalous state of things if, while these men, to whom you were indebted for so many services, were not allowed to do anything contrary to your established laws, this man, who has never done you a single good service, but has committed a prodigious number of offences, should be found to have received at your hands, so readily and so contrary to justice and expediency, the right to transgress the laws. And why appeal to ancient history? Count up the men of your own days and see if anyone has ever been found so shameless. A careful scrutiny will not reveal a single instance.
