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Here is another point, men of Athens. The difference between railing and accusation I take to be this: accusation implies crimes punishable by law; railing, such abuse as quarrelsome people vent upon one another according to their disposition. These law courts, if I am not mistaken, were built by our ancestors, not that we should convene you here to listen to us taunting one another with the secret scandal of private life, but that we should here bring home to the guilty offences against the public weal.
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Aeschines knows that as well as I do; but he has a keener taste for scurrility than for accusation. However, even in that respect he deserves to get as good as he gives. I will come to that presently; meantime I will ask him just one question. Are we to call you the enemy of Athens, Aeschines, or my enemy? Mine, of course. Yet you let slip your proper opportunities of bringing me to justice on behalf of the citizens, if I had done wrong, by audit, by indictment, by any sort of legal procedure;
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but here, where I am invulnerable on every ground, by law, by lapse of time, by limitation, by many earlier judgements covering every point, by default of any previous conviction for any public offence, here, where the country must take her share in the repute or disrepute of measures that were approved by the people, here you have met me face to face. You pose as my enemy; are you sure you are not the enemy of the people?