231
Do you see any resemblance between this computation of results and your casting up of counters? Are we to cancel the gains to balance the losses,The metaphors here are taken from calculations on the abacus, where subtraction of counters from one side of the board would serve instead of addition to the other. Instead of showing the gains of Athens side by side with her losses, Aeschines would record only the adverse balance. instead of providing that they shall never be forgotten? I need not add that other nations have had experience of that cruelty which is always observable whenever Philip has got people under his heel, whereas you have been lucky enough to enjoy the fruits of that factitious humanity in which he clothed himself with an eye to the future. But I pass that by.
232
I will not shrink from observing that any man who wished to bring an orator to the proof honestly, and not merely to slander him, would never have laid such charges as you have alleged, inventing analogies, and mimicking my diction and gestures. The fate of Greece, forsooth, depended on whether I used this word or that, or moved my hand this way or that way!