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[2]
Neither would the following
suggestion prove unprofitable as the next step, that whatever deceptions anyone shall
practise upon you through some well-timed maneuver,1 or the late hour of the day or by any other opening, that there should
be someone who will scrutinize the measures a second time, when you, being arbiters of
your own conduct, are willing to listen, so that of the measures should prove to be such
as those assert who then persuaded you, you may put them into effect more wholeheartedly
as having passed the test: but if, after all, they are found to be otherwise, that you may
halt before going farther. For it would be a shocking thing that those who had failed to
choose the best plan should be forced to put the worst into effect, and not have a chance
to reconsider and choose from among other alternatives the plan that had stood second.
1 Demosthenes in Dem. L. 2.14 claimed to have been condemned, καιρῷ τινὶ ληφθείς, because his name appeared first on the list of those accused of complicity in the affair of Harpalus.
Demosthenes with an English translation by Norman W. DeWitt, Ph.D., and Norman J. DeWitt, Ph.D. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1949.
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