all attempts to convict me at the time; and after all these years, with
the imputations, the jests, the invectives, that he has accumulated, he
appears to play his part. So it is, that though his accusations are
against me, it is Ctesiphon that he prosecutes; and though he sets his
quarrel with me in the forefront of the whole suit, he has never faced me
in person to settle the quarrel, and it is another whom we see him trying
to deprive of his civil rights. {16} Yet surely, besides everything else
that may be pleaded on behalf of Ctesiphon, this, I think, may surely be
most reasonably urged--that we ought in justice to have brought our own
quarrel to the test by ourselves, instead of avoiding all conflict with
one another, and looking for a third party to whom we could do harm. Such
iniquity really passes all bounds.

{17} From this one may see the nature of all his charges alike, uttered,
as they have been, without justice or regard for truth. Yet I desire also
to examine them severally, and more particularly the false statements
which he made against me in regard to the Peace and the Embassy, when he
ascribed to me[n] the things which he himself had done in conjunction with
Philocrates. And here it is necessary, men of Athens, and perhaps
appropriate,[n] that I should remind you of the state of affairs
subsisting during that period, so that you may view each group of actions
in the light of the circumstances of the time.

{18} When the Phocian war had broken out[n] (not through any action of
mine, for I had not yet entered public life), your own attitude, in the
first place, was such, that you wished for the preservation of the
Phocians, although you saw that their actions were unjustifiable; while
you would have been delighted at anything that might happen to the
Thebans, against whom you felt an indignation that was neither
unreasonable nor unfair; for they had not used their good fortune at