portion of our citizens, though not all, are commissioned with the rest,
Heaven blesses, and Fortune aids the struggle: but where you send out a
general and an empty decree and hopes from the hustings, nothing that
you desire is done; your enemies scoff, and your allies die for fear of
such an armament. For it is impossible--ay, impossible, for one man to
execute all your wishes: to promise, [Footnote: Chares is particularly
alluded to. The "promises of Chares" passed into a proverb.] and assert,
and accuse this or that person, is possible; but so your affairs are
ruined. The general commands wretched unpaid hirelings; here are persons
easily found, who tell you lies of his conduct; you vote at random from
what you hear: what then can be expected?

How is this to cease, Athenians? When you make the same persons
soldiers, and witnesses of the generals conduct, and judges when they
return home at his audit; [Footnote: The audit or scrutiny of his
conduct which every officer of the republic had to undergo, before a
jury, if necessary, at the end of his administration. In the case of a
general, the scrutiny would be like a court-martial. The Athenian
people, (says Demosthenes,) as represented by the citizen soldiers,
would themselves be witnesses of the general's conduct. These same
soldiers, when they came home, or at least a portion of them, might
serve on the jury; and so the people would be both witnesses and
judges.] so that you may not only hear of your own affairs, but be
present to see them. So disgraceful is our condition now, that every
general is twice or thrice tried [Footnote: Chares was tried several
times. Capital charges were preferred also against Autocles,
Cephisodotus, Leosthenes, Callisthenes.] before you for his life, though
none dares even once to hazard his life against the enemy: they prefer
the death of kidnappers and thieves to that which becomes them; for it
is a malefactor's part to die by sentence of the law, a general's to die