1
In dealing with the sum of money under discussion and the other matters referred to this Assembly, I see no difficulty, men of Athens, in either of two methods: I may attack the officials who assign and distribute the public funds and may thus gain credit with those who regard this system as detrimental to the State, or I may approve and commend the right to receive these doles and so gratify those who are especially in need of them. For neither class has the interest of the State in view, when they approve or complain of the system, but they are prompted respectively by their poverty or their affluence.
2
I myself would neither propose such a distribution of the doles, nor oppose the right to receive them; but I do urge you to reflect seriously in your own minds that while the sum of money you are discussing is a trifle, the habit of mind that it fosters is a serious matter. Now if you so organize the receipt of money that it is associated with the performance of duties, so far from injuring, you will actually confer on the State and on yourselves the greatest benefit; but if a festival or any other pretext is good enough to justify a dole, and yet you refuse even to listen to the suggestion that there is any obligation attached to it, beware lest you end by acknowledging that what you now consider a proper practice was a grievous error.
