[121]
These considerations you should bear in mind and not pay heed to those who gratify you for the moment, while caring nothing for the future, nor to those who profess to love the people, but are in fact the bane of the whole state; since in times past also when men of this character took over the supremacy of the rostrum,1 they led the city on to such a degree of folly that she suffered the fate which I described a moment ago.
1 Obviously sarcastic: Their “supremacy” spells disaster to the state.