Now I would have written this letter, as I said at the outset, for the sake of Lycurgus alone, but over and above that, believing it to be to your interest to know the criticisms being circulated among those who go abroad, I became all the more eager to dispatch the letter. I beg of those who for private reasons were at odds with Lycurgus to endure to hear what in truth and justice may be said in his behalf; for be well assured, men of Athens, that, as things now are, the city is acquiring an evil reputation because of the way his sons have been treated.
[sect. 6] For none of the Greeks is ignorant that during the lifetime of Lycurgus you honored him extraordinarily,33 and, though many charges were brought against him by those who were envious of him, you never found a single charge to be true, and you so trusted him and believed him to be truly democratic beyond all others that you decided many points of justice on the ground that Lycurgus said so, and that sufficed for you. This would certainly not have happened unless it had seemed to you that he was so honest.
[sect. 7] Today, therefore, all men, upon hearing that his sons are in prison, while pitying the dead man, sympathize with the children as innocent sufferers, and reproach you bitterly after a manner that I, for one, should not dare to write down for, touching the reports which make me vexed at those who utter them, and which I contradict as best I can, trying to come to your defence, I have written these only to the extent of making it clear to you that many people are blaming you, since I believe it to be to your interest to know this, though to quote their words verbatim I judge would be offensive.
[sect. 8] Apart from mere abuse, however, I shall reveal all that certain people say and which I believe it to your advantage to have heard. For, after all, no one has supposed that you laboured under a misunderstanding and deception concerning the truth so far as Lycurgus himself is concerned, for the length of time during which, where subject to scrutiny,34 he never was found guilty of any wrong toward you in either thought or deed and the fact that no human being could ever have accused you of indifference to any other action of his naturally eliminate the pretext of ignorance.
