5
What I say is that only those have the right to sit in Council on our concerns who, besides holding the citizenship, have their hearts set upon it. For to them it makes a great difference whether this city is prosperous or unsuccessful, because they consider themselves obliged to bear their share in her calamities as they also share in her advantages.
6
But those who, though citizens by birth, adopt the view that any country in which they have their business is their fatherland, are evidently men who would even abandon the public interest of their city to seek their private gain, because they regard their fortune, not the city, as their fatherland.
7
Now I will demonstrate that Philon here has set his private safety above the public danger of the city, and has held it preferable to pass his life without danger to himself rather than save the city by sharing her dangers with the rest of the citizens.
8
For this man, gentlemen of the Council, in the midst of the city’s disaster (which I only touch upon so far as I am forced to do so), was banned from the town by the Thirty along with the main body of the citizens, and for a while he lived in the country: but when the party of Phyle returned to the Peiraeus, and the people, not only from the country, but from over the border, assembled together, partly in the town and partly in the Peiraeus, and when each to the extent of his powers came to the rescue of his fatherland, Philon’s conduct was the opposite of that shown by the rest of the citizens.
