Demosthenes: “Or when, O Athenians, shall we be willing to act as becomes us?”

They say that you should keep quiet, though you are injured; but they can not themselves keep quiet among you, though no one injures them.

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?

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

Yea, among these men, some have risen rapidly from poverty to wealth, from meanness and obscurity to repute and honor, while you, on the contrary, have fallen from honor to obscurity, from wealth to indigence.