[28]
And yet from a slave he has become a citizen, and has exchanged beggary for wealth and the position of under-clerk for that of lawgiver! And here one might even make it an accusation against you that, whereas your ancestors chose as lawgivers Solon, Themistocles and Pericles, in the belief that the laws would accord with the character of their makers, you have chosen Teisamenus,1 son of Mechanion, and Nicomachus, and other persons who were under-clerks; and although you feel that the magistracy is depraved by people of this sort, it is just these men who have your confidence.
1 Who proposed the decree that the laws should be revised.
Lysias. Lysias with an English translation by W.R.M. Lamb, M.A. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1930.
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