4
But I find no difficulty in countering those statements. As regards the public services, I say that his father would have done better not to perform them than to spend so much of his substance: for it was on account of this that he won the confidence of the people and overthrew the democracy; and so our memory of these deeds must be more abiding than of the offerings he has set upIn the temples at Athens, Delphi, etc. in record of those services.
5
As to his love of quiet, I say that we ought not to investigate his sobriety today, when there is no chance for him to be licentious: we should rather examine that period in which, being free to choose either way of life, he preferred to mark his citizenship by illegal acts. For the fact of his committing no offences now is due to those who have prevented him; but what he did then was owing to the man’s character and to those who vouchsafed him a free hand. So that if he claims to pass the scrutiny on this score, you should form this conception of the case, if you would not seem fatuous in his sight.
6
And if they have recourse to the further argument that time does not allow of your electing another man, and that his failure to pass your scrutiny must inevitably leave the ancestral sacrifices unperformed, you should reflect that the time has already long gone by. For tomorrow is the last remaining day of the year, and on that day a sacrifice is offered to Zeus the Saviour, when it is impossible to complete a panel of jurymen in defiance of the laws.Apparently the law forbade any court to sit on that day.
7
If all these difficulties are the contrivance of this man, what are we to expect, when once he has passed the scrutiny, of the man who will have persuaded the outgoing magistrates to commit an illegality in his interest? Will he contrive just a few things of this sort in the course of a year? For my part, I think not.
