[205] When they caught Themistocles presumptuously setting himself above the people, they banished him from
Athens
, and found him guilty of siding with the Medes. Because Cimon had dislocated the ancestral constitution by his personal efforts, they acquitted him by a majority of three votes only on the capital charge, and made him pay fifty talents. Such was their attitude to the men who had rendered those signal services. And they were right; they would not sell to those men their own freedom and their pride in their own achievements;
1
they honored them as long as they did right, but resisted them when they tried to do wrong.
Against Aristocrates. Demosthenes. James Herbert Vince (Translator). London. 1935.
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Funding provided by The Annenberg CPB/Project.