[9]
when they had the opportunity of avenging themselves on an enemy and doing the state a service by exposing and bringing home to me any public offence of which I had been guilty, as Choregus or otherwise, not one of them was able to prove that I had done your people any wrong, great or small.1 Yet at today's trial, when they are prosecuting for prosecution to the charge before the court,2 they are seeking to achieve my downfall with a tissue of lies calculated to bring my public life into disrepute. If the state has in fact been wronged, they are compensating it not with redress, but with a mere accusation; while they are themselves demanding that reparation for a wrong which has been suffered by the state should be made to them in person.
1 This is presumably a reference to the speaker's δοκιμασία when elected a member of the βουλή in the preceding June. All magistrates had to submit to an inquiry into their general fitness to assume public office before they were installed.
2 Cf. Antiph. 5.11. There it is stated more explicitly that the διωμοσία ensured against irrelevant charges.
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