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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Polity of Athenians and Lacedaemonians by Xenophon: "Cimon," c. 16; and Thuc. i. 108.
I seem to overhear a retort, "No one, of course, is deprived of his
civil rights at Athens unjustly." My answer is, that there are some
who are unjustly deprived of their civil rights, though the cases are
certainly rare. But it will take more than a few to attack the
democracy at Athens, since you may take it as an established fact, it
is not the man who has lost his civil rights justly that takes the
matter to heart, but the victims, if any, of injustice. But how in the
world can any one imagine that many are in a state of civil disability
at Athens, where the People and the holders of office are one and the
same? It is from iniquitous exercise of office, from iniquity
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