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For our present difficulties require goodwill and humanity far more than dissension and malice, an excess of which certain persons turn to their advantage, pursuing their businessAntiatticista cites this passage under ἐργολάβος Bekker’s Anecdota 1. p. 94. 3-4. to your detriment with the expectation of returns, of which I pray that their calculations may cheat them. If any one of you ridicules these warnings he must be filled with a profound simplicity. For if, observing that things have happened which no one could have expected, he imagines things could not happen now which have happened already before now, when the people were set at variance with those who spoke in their behalf by men suborned for the purpose, has he not taken leave of his senses?
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If I were present in person I should be trying to explain these matters to you by word of mouth, but since I am in such a plight as I pray may be the lot of anyone who has uttered falsehoods against me to my ruin, I have sent my message in the form of a letter, in the first place, having supreme regard for your honor and your advantage and, in the second, because the same goodwill that I felt toward Lycurgus during his lifetime I believe it right to show that I feel also toward his sons.
