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What is it that the law commands these men to do? Not to serve, but after approval by the courtAll incoming officials were required to pass a formal scrutiny (δοκιμασία) before entering upon office. In the case of most officials this was conducted before a court. Aeschines mentions this preliminary scrutiny here because it would naturally follow that any person who had to pass the official scrutiny before entering on his work would have to pass the official accounting on laying it down. to hold office (for even the officers who are selected by lot are not exempt from the scrutiny, but hold their office only after approval); and to submit their accounts before the clerk and board of auditors, precisely as other officers are required to do. As proof of the truth of my statement, the laws themselves shall be read to you.
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The Laws
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When, therefore, fellow citizens, what the lawgiver names offices, they call employments and commissions, it is your duty to remember the law, and to set it against their shamelessness, and to remind them that you refuse to accept a rascally sophist, who expects to destroy the laws with phrases; but that when a man has made an illegal motion, the more cleverly he talks, the more angry will he find you. For by right, fellow citizens, the orator and the law ought to speak the same language; but when the law utters one voice and the orator another, you ought to give your vote to the just demand of the law, not to the shamelessness of the speaker.
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But now to the irrefutable argument, as Demosthenes calls it, I wish to reply briefly in advance. For he will say, I am in charge of the construction of walls; I admit it; but I have made a present of a hundred minas to the state, and I have carried out the work on a larger scale than was prescribed; what then is it that you want to audit? unless a man’s patriotism is to be audited! Now to this pretext hear my answer, true to the facts and beneficial to you.
