On The Crown   

'Know that I am not fain ill-news to bring';

and 'evil in evil wise',[n] may you be brought to perdition, by the gods
above all, and then by all those here present, villainous citizen,
villainous third-rate actor that you are. (_To the clerk_.) Read the
evidence.

[_The evidence is read_.]

{268} Such was I in my relation to the State. And as to my private life,
unless you all know that I was open-hearted and generous and at the
disposal of all who had need of me, I am silent; I prefer to tell you
nothing, and to produce no evidence whatever, to show whether I ransomed
some from the enemy, or helped others to give their daughters in marriage,
or rendered any such services. {269} For my principle may perhaps be
expressed thus. I think that one who has received a kindness ought to
remember it all his life; but that the doer of the kindness should forget
it once for all; if the former is to behave like a good man, the latter
like one free from all meanness. To be always recalling and speaking of
one's own benefactions is almost like upbraiding the recipients of them. I
will do nothing of the kind, and will not be led into doing so. Whatever
be the opinion that has been formed of me in these respects, with that I
am content.

{270} But I desire to be rid of personal topics, and to say a little more
to you about public affairs. For if, Aeschines, you can mention one of all
those who dwell beneath the sun above us, Hellene or foreigner, who has
not suffered under the absolute sway, first of Philip, and now of
Alexander, so be it! I concede that it is my fortune or misfortune,
whichever you are pleased to call it, that has been to blame for
everything. {271} But if many of those who have never once even seen me or
heard my voice have suffered much and terribly--and not individuals alone,
but whole cities and nations--how much more just and truthful it is to
regard the common fortune (as it seems to be) of all mankind, and a
certain stubborn drift of events in the wrong direction, as the cause of
these sufferings. {272} Such considerations, however, you discard. You
impute the blame to me, whose political life has been lived among my own
fellow countrymen--and that, though you know that your slander falls in
part (if not entirely) upon all of them, and above all upon yourself. For
if, when I took part in the discussion of public affairs, I had had
absolute power, it would have been possible for all of you, the other
orators, to lay the blame on me. {273} But if you were present at every
meeting of the Assembly; if the city always brought forward questions of
policy for public consideration; if at the time my policy appeared the
best to every one, and above all to you (for it was certainly from no
goodwill that you relinquished to me the hopes, the admiration, the
honours, which all attached themselves to my policy at that time, but
obviously because the truth was too strong for you, and you had nothing
better to propose); then surely you are guilty of monstrous iniquity, in
finding fault to-day with a policy, than which, at the time, you could
propose nothing better. {274} Among all the rest of mankind, I observe
that some such principles as the following have been, as it were,
determined and ordained. If a man commits a deliberate crime, indignation
and punishment are ordained against him. If he commits an involuntary
mistake, instead of punishment, he is to receive pardon. If, without crime
or mistake, one who has given himself up wholly to that which seems to be
for the advantage of all has, in company with all, failed to achieve
success, then it is just, not to reproach or revile such a man, but to
sympathize with him. {275} Moreover, it will be seen that all these
principles are not so ordained in the laws alone. Nature herself has laid
them down in her unwritten law, and in the moral consciousness of mankind.
Aeschines, then, has so far surpassed all mankind in brutality and in the
art of misrepresentation, that he actually denounces me for things which
he himself mentioned under the name of misfortunes.