24.25

The defendant is not a violent or insolent man, even the challenger agrees to this. Nor did the defendant join up with the Thirty.

οὐδ᾽ ἂν...φήσειεν: “he would not allege.” φήσειεν > 3rd sing. aor. act. opt. of φημί.

καὶ τοῦτο: “even about this,” i.e. the speaker’s disposition. Adverbial use of καί.

τοῖς ἄλλοις ὁμοίως: “just as (he lies) about the other matters.” Supply ψεύδεται.

ἐπὶ τῶν τριάκοντα: “at the time of The Thirty.” ἐπί + gen. = “in the time of” (LSJ ἐπί II). The Thirty, an oppressive pro-Spartan oligarchic government, briefly controlled Athens in 404/3 BCE, during which time it undertook a campaign of violent proscriptions and dismantled the democratic institutions of the city state.

γενόμενος ἐν δυνάμει: “being in a position of power.”

κακῶς ἐποίησα: “I mistreated.”

ἔφυγον εἰς Χαλκίδα: when the Thirty took power, many Athenian democratic partisans went into exile. The core of the democratic resistance under the leadership of Thrasybulus was located in the Piraeus, the fortified harbor district of Athens. Chalkis, on the island of Euboea directly north of Attica, was one of the neighboring allies of Athens that took in political refugees. Highlighting one’s refugee status was a common way to affirm anti-oligarchic sympathies.

μετ᾽ ἐκείνων: i.e. the Thirty.

ἀδεῶς πολιτεύεσθαι: “to live with impunity,” i.e. declare allegiance to the Thirty and return to Athens. The Thirty granted citizen rights to 3,000 men drawn from the propertied classes of Athenian society. The income requirements for citizen enrollment have implications for the defendant’s claim to poverty, though it is unclear whether he is suggesting here that he was among the chosen. For the potential of humor in this image of a citizen who lives on a state benefit being influential with the notoriously elitist Thirty, see the interpretive essay on these chapters.   

ἀδεῶς: the adverb implies that the rule of the Thirty and the men who sided with their cause have gone wrongly unpunished under the establishment of the general amnesty, a further attempt by the defendant to establish his democratic bona fides.