19
How monstrous, gentlemen, would be our fate if, although the men who are unable to deny their possession of your money are acquitted by you on the intercession of a friend, we who have shown our personal zeal in your people’s cause, and whose father, too, has done you no wrong, are not to obtain your grace! If some foreigner had come and either asked you for money or claimed to be recorded as your benefactor, you would have granted his request; and will you not grant to us, that we ourselves should have civic rights among you?
20
If there have been cases of disloyalty to your government or of the proposal of an improper motion, it is not the absent who are to blame for these things, since you have absolved even those who were present. For, even when one of our citizens here persuades you with mischievous advice, it is not you who are to blame, but your deceiver.
21
But those men,The revolutionaries. convicting themselves of guilt in advance, have taken themselves off in order to escape punishment: while any others who were guilty,—though in a less degree than they, but still guilty,—are moved by their fear at once of you and of their accusers to take the field instead of staying at home, in order that they may either mollify you or prevail on them.
