I could have wished, gentlemen, that my powers of speech and my experience of the world1 were as great as the misfortune and the severities with which I have been visited. Instead, I know more of the last two than I should, and am more wanting in the first than is good for me.
1 τῶν πραγμάτων refers especially to the workings of the law, and is picked up by οὗ μὲν γάρ με ἔδει . . . ἐμπειρία. The speaker means that had he been less ignorant in such matters, he might have effectively protested against the employment of ἔνδειξις and ἀπαγωγή which involved the close confinement of the defendant before his trial, instead of the more regular δίκη φόνου before the Areopagus. See Introduction.
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