whatsoever judgement upon this present suit will conduce to your public
reputation, and the purity of each man's conscience, that judgement they
may put it into all your minds to give.

{9} Now if Aeschines had confined his charges to the subject of the
indictment, I too, in making my defence, would have dealt at once with the
actual resolution of the Council. But since he has devoted no less a
portion of his speech to the relation of other matters, and for the most
part has spoken against me falsely, I think it is necessary, and at the
same time just, that I should deal briefly, men of Athens, with these, in
order that none of you may be led by irrelevant arguments to listen less
favourably to my pleas in answer to the indictment itself.

{10} As for his slanderous vituperation of my private life, mark how
straightforward and how just is the reply that I make. If you know me as
the man that he charged me with being (for my life has been spent nowhere
but in your own midst), do not even suffer me to speak--no, not though my
whole public career has been one of transcendent merit--but rise and
condemn me without delay. But if, in your judgement and belief, I am a
better man than Aeschines, and come of better men; if I and mine are no
worse than any other respectable persons (to use no offensive expression);
then do not trust him even in regard to other points, for it is plain that
all that he said was equally fictitious; but once more accord to me to-day
the goodwill which throughout the past you have so often displayed towards
me in previous trials. {11} Knave as you are,[n] Aeschines, you were
assuredly more fool than knave, when you thought that I should dismiss all
that I had to say with regard to my past acts and political life, and
should turn to meet the abuse that fell from you. I shall not do so; I am
not so brain-sick; but I will review the falsehoods and the calumnies
which you uttered against my political career; and then, if the court