Demosthenes: “We should consider as grievous, not what we expend for our deliverance, but what we shall suffer in case of refusal.”

Such is the truth, spoken with perfect freedom, purely from good-will and for the best: not a speech fraught with flattery and mischief and deceit, to earn money for the speaker, and to put the commonwealth into the hands of our enemies.

You can not surely allege, that Aristodemus ought to be of importance at Athens, and Athens to be of no account among the Greeks.

But I suppose, you inherit a reputation from your father and grandfather, which it were disgraceful in your own person to extinguish, whereas the ancestry of the state was ignoble and mean.

How is it equitable, that certain of these men, returned from prison, should not know themselves, while the state, that once protected all Greece and held the foremost place, is sunk in ignominy and humiliation?