STUDY I.

And what could one consider better than democracy? Under it, even the inequality of fortune is leveled out, and all are far from slavery; all are free. There is no one who does not share equally with the rest in liberty, just as they do in nature. Both the man in high office The Greek epi tes taxeos refers to an official or commander in a specific rank. and the craftsman who works with his own hands deliberate on war; so too do the orator, the sailor, the soldier, and every other person. Often, a man unskilled in war original: "apolemos tis" has recognized and pointed out something that escaped the general's notice; and what an orator has proposed, a general carries out. A man of low status may bring a lawsuit, and a man of higher status must pay the penalty. Yet the one who receives justice does not receive it for himself alone, but for the whole city, for its laws, and for its good order. Nor does the one who pays the penalty pay it to an individual, but to the entire people and the constitution, from which all social order proceeds.

I was born into this form of government; I am its child and its student. I have been its lover and its supporter—more than any other man, I believe—and its most diligent advocate. This very place, the law court, is my witness; the council chamber The Bouleuterion was the meeting place of the Council of Five Hundred in Athens., to which I have devoted even more of my attention, is my witness. There are also worthy witnesses by whom all things are judged and held to account: I mean the comic poets and those who stage the dramas of life. Even their profession The speaker is likely referring to the tradition of Old Comedy, where playwrights like Aristophanes satirized and scrutinized politicians. did not persuade me to speak in any way other than I ought—to put it mildly.

When I entered the rank of a statesman along with the others—after you had approved me through the official scrutiny dokimasia: a formal examination of a citizen's fitness for public office and not because I had seized power for myself—I looked so little to my own personal gain that I continually advised you neither to acquire more empire nor to seek things beyond what was necessary...

See Isaeus, page 118. Evidently, the judges measured the time allotted for the prosecution, the defense, and the judgment itself by the flowing water-clock clepsydra: a device that measured time by the regulated flow of water from one vessel to another. There are many passages concerning this custom in the works of Demosthenes and other orators. Demosthenes, Against Ctesiphon, section 139: "If he speaks now, let him show it in my water" original: "en to emo hydati". This refers to the time remaining in the speaker's allotted water-clock.. See Brem’s commentary there. The same author, in his First Speech against Aphobus, section 12: "As for what each man

has taken privately... it is not possible to speak by the same water." See Brem’s commentary there, along with Buttmann’s on the Speech against Meidias, section 36. Cicero, at the end of the second book of the Tusculan Disputations: "Tomorrow, then, to the water-clock." See Davies’ commentary there. Add Allatius, On the Measurement of Time, chapter 6, page 56; and Moschopulus, On the Rules, page 79. Moschopulus transcribed this from Harpocration's Lexicon under the entry "Measured-out Day."