against your wishes--who never speaks to please, but always to advise what
is best; one who chooses a policy in which more issues must be decided by
chance than by calculation, and yet makes himself responsible to you for
both--that is the courageous man, {70} and such is the citizen who is of
value to his country, rather than those who, to gain an ephemeral
popularity, have ruined the supreme interests of the city. So far am I
from envying these men, or thinking them worthy citizens of their country,
that if any one were to ask me to say, what good _I_ had really done to
the city, although, men of Athens, I could tell how often I had been
trierarch and choregus,[n] how I had contributed funds, ransomed
prisoners, and done other like acts of generosity, I would mention none of
these things; {71} I would say only that my policy is not one of measures
like theirs--that although, like others, I could make accusations and
shower favours and confiscate property and do all that my opponents do, I
have never to this day set myself to do any of these things; I have been
influenced neither by gain nor by ambition; but I continue to give the
advice which sets me below many others in your estimation, but which must
make you greater, if you will listen to it; for so much, perhaps, I may
say without offence. {72} Nor, I think, should I be acting fairly as a
citizen, if I devised such political measures as would at once make me the
first man in Athens, and you the last of all peoples. As the measures of a
loyal politician develop, the greatness of his country should develop with
them; and it is the thing which is best, not the thing which is easiest,
that every speaker should advocate. Nature will find the way to the
easiest course unaided. To the best, the words and the guidance of the
loyal citizen must show the way.

{73} I have heard it remarked before now, that though what I _say_ is
always what is best, still I never contribute anything but words; whereas
the city needs work of some practical kind. I will tell you without any