[4]
It would be astonishing if, while you judge to be worthy of death those who were guilty of battery under the oligarchy, you shall allow to go unpunished those who, under the democracy, are guilty of the same practices. And yet the latter would justly meet with a more severe punishment; for they reveal more conspicuously their real baseness. This is what I mean: if anyone has the effrontery to transgress the law now, when it is not permissible, what would he have done, I ask you, when the government in power actually was grateful to such malefactors?
Isocrates. Isocrates with an English Translation in three volumes, by George Norlin, Ph.D., LL.D. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1980.
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