9
For the council which formerly commanded confidence is being discredited by you, who claim to be the people's man, though it is a body to which the people gave in trust the protection of their lives, to whose charge they have often committed their constitution and democracy, a council which, destined though you were to malign it, has safeguarded your life, according to your own account so often threatened, and which keeps the mystic depositsThe exact nature of these mystic deposits, on which the welfare of the community was thought to depend, is not known; they were probably oracles. whereby the safety of the city is preserved.