20. I will give you strong proofs of this, not words, but, what you value, facts. Hear then what has happened to me, that you may know that I would not yield to any one contrary to what is just, through fear of death, at the same time that, by not yielding, I must perish. I shall tell you what will be displeasing and wearisome[5], yet true. For I, O Athenians, never bore any other magisterial office in the city, but have been a senator: and our Antiochean tribe happened to supply the Prytanes when you chose to condemn in a body the ten generals, who had not taken off those that perished in the sea-fight, in violation of the law, as you afterwards all thought. At that time I alone of the Prytanes opposed your doing any thing contrary to the laws, and I voted against you; and when the orators were ready to denounce me, and to carry me before a magistrate, and you urged and cheered them on, I thought I ought rather to meet the danger with law and justice on my side, than through fear of imprisonment or death to take part with you in your unjust designs. And this happened while the city was governed by a democracy. But when it became an oligarchy, the Thirty, having sent for me with four others to the Tholus, ordered us to bring Leon the Salaminian from Salamis, that he might be put to death; and they gave many similar orders to many others, wishing to involve as many as they could in guilt. Then however I shewed, not in word but in deed, that I did not care for death, if the expression be not too rude, in the smallest degree, but that all my care was to do nothing unjust or unholy. For that government, strong as it was, did not so overawe me as to make me commit an unjust action; but when we came out from the Tholus, the four went to Salamis, and brought back Leon; but I went away home. And perhaps for this I should have been put to death, if that government had not been speedily broken up. And of this you can have many witnesses. ----- Footnote 5: But for the authority of Stallbaum, I should have translated δικανικὰ “forensic,” that is, such arguments as an advocate would use in a court of justice. -----