12
Now I pass over many other considerations, on the strength of which a different kind of a man and with no other service to his credit would justly demand to obtain acquittal; I mean the equipping of choruses and triremes and the contributing of money on all occasions.Prosperous citizens of Athens were required from time to time to contribute money for the equipment of triremes, dramatic choruses, and religious deputations to various shrines. These were the λῃτουργίαιin contrast to the ὑπηρεσίαιmentioned in Dem. Ex. 52. In these duties I shall be found, not only to have been the first to do my own part, but also to have urged the rest to do theirs. Reviewing these services one by one, men of Athens, consider how undeserved is the calamity that has now befallen me.
13
Since my present troubles are so abundant I am at a loss to know what I shall bemoan first. Will it be my advanced age,His age was sixty. Cicero was only a year older when he wrote his essay Cic. On Old Age. at which, for the first time and contrary to my deserts, I am compelled to experience the hazards of a perilous exile? Or will it be the disgrace of having been convicted and ruined without any investigation or proof of guilt? Or will it be in disappointment of my hopes in place of which I have fallen heir to evils that rightfully belonged to others,
