78
And it is for this man, responsible as we find him for all these and other injuries and ignominies, late as well as early, great as well as small, that theyi.e., people who speak in his favor. are going to have the audacity to proclaim their friendship; for Theramenes, who has suffered death, not as your champion, but as the victim of his own baseness, and has been justly punished under the oligarchy—he had already caused its ruin—as he would justly have been under democracy. Twice overFirst by supporting the Four Hundred, and then by joining the Thirty. did he enslave you, despising what was present,Democracy. and longing for what was absent,Oligarchy. and, while giving them the fairest name,i.e., his pretext of government by the best. setting himself up as instructor in most monstrous acts.
79
Well, I have dealt sufficiently with Theramenes in my accusation. You now have reached the moment in which your thoughts must have no room for pardon or for pity; when you must punish Eratosthenes and his partners in power. You should not show your superiority to the city’s foes in your fighting merely to show your inferiority to your own enemies in your voting.
80
Nor must you feel more gratitude to them for what they say that they mean to do than anger for what they have done; nor, while taking your measures against the Thirty in their absence,At Eleusis. acquit them in their presence; nor in your own rescue be more lax than fortune who has delivered these men into the hands of the city.
81
Such is the accusation against Eratosthenes and those friends of his, on whom he will fall back in his defence, as his abettors in these practices. Yet it is an unequal contest between the city and Eratosthenes: for whereas he was at once accuser and judge of the persons brought to trial, we to-day are parties engaged in accusation and defence.
