of his speech he called Philip 'barbarian' and 'devil'; and he reported the delight of the Arcadians at the thought that Athens was now waking up and attending to public affairs. One thing he told us, which caused him, he said, more distress than anything else. As he was leaving, he met Atrestidas, who was travelling home from Philip's court, and with him were walking some thirty women and children. Wondering at this, he asked one of the travellers who the man was, and what this crowd was along with him; {306} and on hearing that it was Atrestidas, who was on his way home, and that these with him were captives from Olynthus whom Philip had given him as a present, he was struck with the atrocity of the thing and burst into tears, and lamented the unhappy condition of Hellas, that she should allow such tragedies to pass unnoticed. At the same time he counselled you to send representatives to Arcadia to denounce Philip's agents, saying that his friends told him that if Athens took notice of the matter and sent envoys, Philip's agents would be punished. {307} Such, men of Athens, was the tenor of his speeches then; and very noble they were, and worthy of this city. But when he had been to Macedonia, and had seen the enemy of himself and of the Hellenes, were his speeches couched any more in the same or a similar tone? Far from it! He told you that you must neither remember your forefathers nor mention your trophies, nor go to the aid of any one. He was amazed, he said, at those who urged you to confer with the rest of the Hellenes in regard to the Peace with Philip, as though there was any need to convince some one else about a matter which was purely your own affair. {308} And as for Philip, 'Why, good gracious!' said he, 'Philip is the most thorough Hellene in the world, a most able speaker, and most friendly towards Athens: only there are certain persons in Athens so unreasonable and so churlish, that they are not ashamed to slander him and call him "barbarian".' Now is it possible that the man who had formerly spoken as Aeschines did, should now have dared to speak in such a way, if he had not been corrupted? What? {309} Is there a man who after conceiving such detestation for Atrestidas, owing to those children and women from Olynthus, could have endured to act in conjunction with Philocrates, who brought freeborn Olynthian women here to gratify his lust, and is so notorious for his abominable living, that it is unnecessary for me now to use any offensive or unpleasant expression about him; for if I say that Philocrates brought women here, the rest will be understood by all of you and of the bystanders, and you will, I am sure, pity the poor unhappy creatures—though Aeschines felt no pity for them, and shed no tears for Hellas at the sight of them, or at the thought of the outrages they were suffering among their own allies at the hands of our ambassadors. {310} No! he will shed tears on his own behalf—he whose proceedings as ambassador have had such results—and perhaps he will bring forward his children, and mount them upon the platform. But, gentlemen of the jury, when you see the children of Aeschines, remember that the children of many of your allies and friends are now vagabonds, wandering in beggary, owing to the cruel treatment they have suffered in consequence of his conduct, and that these deserve your compassion far more than those whose father is a criminal and a traitor. Remember that your own children have been robbed even of their hopes by these men, who inserted among the terms of the Peace the clause which extended it to posterity. And when you see the tears of Aeschines, remember that you have now before you a man who urged you to send representatives to Arcadia to denounce the agents of Philip. {311} Now to-day you need send no embassy to the Peloponnese; you need take no long journey; you need incur no travelling expenses. Each of you need only come as far as this platform, to deposit the vote which piety and justice demand of him, on behalf of your country; and to condemn the man who—I call Earth and Heaven to witness!—after originally delivering the speeches which I described, speaking of Marathon and of Salamis, and of your battles and your trophies, suddenly—so soon as he had set foot in Macedonia—changed his tone completely, and told you that you must not remember your forefathers, nor recount your trophies, nor go to the aid of any one, nor take common counsel with the Hellenes—who all but told you that you must pull down your walls. {312} Never throughout all time, up to this day, have speeches more shameful than these been delivered before you. What Hellene, what foreigner, is so dense, or so uninstructed, or so fierce in his hatred of our city, that if one were to put to him this question, and say, 'Tell me now; of all Hellas, as it now is—all this inhabited country—is there any part which would have been called by this name, or inhabited by the Hellenes who now possess it, unless those who fought at Marathon and Salamis, our forefathers, had displayed that high prowess on their behalf?' Why, I am certain that not one would answer 'Yes': they would say that all these regions must have been conquered by the barbarians. {313} If then no single man, not even one of our enemies, would have deprived them of these their panegyrics and praises, does Aeschines forbid you to remember them—you their descendants—in order that he himself may receive money? In all other blessings, moreover, the dead have no share; but the praises which follow their noble deeds are the peculiar possession of those who have died thus; for then even envy opposes them no longer. Of these praises Aeschines would deprive them; and justly, therefore, would he now be deprived of his privileges as as a citizen, and justly, in the name of your forefathers, would you exact from him this penalty. Such words you used, nevertheless, in the wickedness of your heart, to despoil and traduce the deeds of our forefathers, and by your word you ruined all our interests in very deed. {314} And then, as the outcome of this, you are a landed gentleman, and have become a personage of consequence! For this, too, you must notice. Before he had wrought every kind of mischief against the city he acknowledged that he had been a clerk; he was grateful to you for having elected him, and behaved himself modestly. But since he has wrought countless evils, he has drawn up his eyebrows, and if any one speaks of 'Aeschines the late clerk', he is his enemy at once, and declares that he has been insulted: he walks through the market- place with his cloak trailing down to his ankles, keeping step with Pythocles,[n] and puffing out his cheeks—already one of Philip's friends and guest-friends, if you please—one of those who would be rid of the democracy, and who regard the established constitution as so much tempestuous madness—he who was once the humble servant of the Round Chamber.

{315} I wish now to recapitulate to you summarily the ways in which Philip got the better of you in policy, when he had taken these heaven-detested men to aid him. It is well worth while to review and contemplate the course of his deception as a whole. It began with his anxiety for peace; for his country was being plundered, and his ports were closed, so that he could enjoy none of the advantages which they afforded; and so he sent the messengers who uttered those generous sentiments on his behalf—Neoptolemus, Aristodemus, and Ctesiphon. {316} But so soon as we went to him as your ambassadors, he immediately hired the defendant to second and co-operate with the abominable Philocrates, and so get the better of those who wished to act uprightly; and he composed such a letter to you as he thought would be most likely to help him to obtain peace. {317} But even so, he had no better chance than before of effecting anything of importance against you, unless he could destroy the Phocians. And this was no easy matter. For he had now been reduced, as if by chance, to a position in which he must either find it impossible to effect any of his designs, or else must perforce lie and forswear himself, and make all men, whether Hellenes or foreigners, witnesses of his own baseness. {318} For if, on the one hand, he received the Phocians as allies, and administered the oath to them together with yourselves, it at once became necessary for him to break his oaths to the Thessalians and Thebans; for he had sworn to aid the latter in the reduction of Boeotia, and the former in the recovery of their place in the Amphictyonic Council; but if, on the other hand, he refused to receive them (as in fact he did reject them), he thought that you would not let him cross the Pass, but would rally to Thermopylae—and so you would have done, had you not been misled; and if this happened, he calculated that he would be unable to march across. {319} Nor had he to learn this from others; he had already the testimony of his own experience. For on the occasion of his first defeat of the Phocians, when he destroyed their mercenaries and their leader and general, Onomarchus, although not a single human being, Hellene or foreigner, came to the aid of the Phocians, except yourselves, so far was he from crossing the Pass and thereafter carrying out any of his designs, that he could not even approach near it. {320} He realized, I imagine, quite clearly, that at a time when the feelings of the Thessalians were turning against him, and the Pheraeans (to take the first instance) refused to accompany him—when the Thebans were being worsted and had lost a battle, and a trophy had been erected to celebrate their defeat—it was impossible for him to cross the Pass, if you rallied to its defence; and that if he made the attempt he would regret it, unless some cunning could be called in to aid him. How then, he asked, can I avoid open falsehood, and yet accomplish all that I wish without appearing perjured? How can it be done? It can be done, if I can get some of the Athenians to deceive the Athenians. In that case the discredit no longer falls to my share. {321} And so Philip's own envoys first informed you that Philip declined to receive the Phocians as allies; and then these men took up the tale, and addressed you to the effect that it was inconvenient to Philip to receive the Phocians as your allies openly, on account of the Thebans and the Thessalians; but if he gets command of the situation, they said, and is granted the Peace, he will do just what we should now request him to promise to do. {322} So they obtained the Peace from you, by holding out these seductive hopes, without including the Phocians. But they had still to prevent the expedition to Thermopylae, for the purpose of which, despite the Peace, your fifty ships were still lying ready at anchor, in order that, if Philip marched, you might prevent him. {323} How then could it be done? what cunning could be used in regard to this expedition in its turn? They must deprive you of the necessary time, by bringing the crisis upon you suddenly, so that, even if you wished to set out, you might be unable to do so. So this, it appears, was what these men undertook to do; while for my part, as you have often been told, I was unable to depart in advance of them, and was prevented from sailing even when I had hired a boat for the purpose. {324} But it was further necessary that the Phocians should come to believe in Philip and give themselves up to him voluntarily, in order that there might be no delay in carrying out the plan, and that no hostile decree whatever might issue from you. 'And therefore,' said he, 'the Athenian ambassadors shall announce that the Phocians are to be preserved from destruction, so that even if any one persists in distrusting me, he will believe them, and put himself in my hands. We will summon the Athenians themselves, so that they may imagine that all that they want is secured, and may pass no hostile decree: but the ambassadors shall make such reports about us, and give such promises, as will prevent them from moving under any circumstances.' {325} It was in this way, and by such trickery as this, that all was ruined, through the action of these doomed wretches. For immediately afterwards, as you know, instead of seeing Thespiae and Plataeae repeopled, you heard that Orchomenus and Coroneia had been enslaved; instead of Thebes being humbled and stripped of her insolence and pride, the walls of your own allies were being razed, and it was the Thebans who were razing them—the Thebans who, according to Aeschines' story, were as good as broken up into villages. {326} Instead of Euboea being handed over to you in exchange for Amphipolis, Philip is making new bases of operations against you in Euboea itself, and is plotting incessantly against Geraestus and Megara. Instead of the restoration of Oropus to you, we are making an expedition under arms to defend Drymus and the country about Panactum[n]—a step which we never took so long as the Phocians remained unharmed. {327} Instead of the restoration of the ancestral worship in the temple, and the exaction of the debt due to the god, the true Amphictyons are fugitives, who have been banished and their land laid desolate; and Macedonians, foreigners, men who never were Amphictyons in the past, are now forcing their way to recognition; while any one who mentions the sacred treasures is thrown from the rocks, and our city has been deprived of her right to precedence in consulting the oracle. {328} Indeed, the story of all that has happened to the city sounds like a riddle. Philip has spoken no falsehood, and has accomplished all that he wished: you hoped for the fulfilment of your fondest prayers, and have seen the very opposite come to pass; you suppose yourselves to be at peace, and have suffered more terribly than if you had been at war; while these men have received money for all this, and up to this very day have not paid the penalty. {329} For that the situation has been made what it is solely by bribery, and that these men have received their price for it all, has, I feel sure, long been plain to you in many ways; and I am afraid that, quite against my will, I may long have been wearying you by attempting to prove with elaborate exactness what you already know for yourselves. {330} Yet this one point I ask you still to listen to. Is there, gentlemen of the jury, one of the ambassadors whom Philip sent, whose statue in bronze you would erect in the market-place? Nay, one to whom you would give maintenance in the Town Hall, or any other of those complimentary grants with which you honour your benefactors? I think not. And why? For you are of no ungrateful or unfair or mean disposition. You would reply, that it is because all that they did was done in the interest of Philip, and nothing in your own; and the reply would be true and just. {331} Do you imagine then that, when such are your sentiments, Philip's are not also such? Do you imagine that he gives all these magnificent presents because your ambassadors conducted their mission honourably and uprightly with a view to your interest? Impossible. Think of Hegesippus, and the manner in which he and the ambassadors who accompanied him were received by Philip. To go no further, he banished Xenocleides, the well- known poet, by public proclamation, because he received the ambassadors, his own fellow citizens. For so it is that he behaves to men who honestly say what they think on your behalf: while to those who have sold themselves he behaves as he has to these men. Do we then need witnesses? do we need stronger proofs than these to establish my conclusions? Will any one be able to steal these conclusions from your minds?

{332} Now I was told a most extraordinary thing just now by some one who accosted me in front of the Court, namely, that the defendant is prepared to accuse Chares, and that by such methods and such arguments as that, he hopes to deceive you. I will not lay undue stress on the fact that Chares,[n] subjected to every form of trial, was found to have acted on your behalf, so far as was in his power, with faithfulness and loyalty, while his frequent shortcomings were due to those who, for money, were cruelly injuring your cause. But I will go much further. Let it be granted that all that the defendant will say of Chares is true. {333} Even so it is utterly absurd that Aeschines should accuse him. For I do not lay the blame on Aeschines for anything that was done in the course of the war—it is the generals who have to account for all such proceedings—nor do I hold him responsible for the city's having made peace. So far I acquit him of everything. What then do I allege, and at what point does my accusation begin? I accuse him of having supported Philocrates, at the time when the city was making peace, instead of supporting those who proposed what was for your real good. I accuse him of taking bribes, and subsequently, on the Second Embassy, of wasting time, and of not carrying out any of your instructions. I accuse him of cheating the city, and ruining everything, by the suggestion of hopes that Philip would do all that we desired; and then I accuse him of speaking afterwards in defence of one of whom[n] all warned him to beware, on account of the great crimes of which he had been guilty. {334} These are my charges, and these are what you must bear in mind. For a Peace that was honest and fair, and men that had sold nothing and had told no falsehoods afterwards, I would even have commended, and would have bidden you crown them. But the injuries which some general may have done you have nothing to do with the present examination. Where is the general who has caused the loss of Halus? or of the Phocians? or of Doriscus? or of Cersobleptes? or of the Sacred Mountain? or of Thermopylae? Who has secured Philip a road to Attica that leads entirely through the country of allies and friends? who has given Coroneia and Orchomenus and Euboea to others? who has all but given Megara to the enemy, only recently? who has made the Thebans powerful? {335} Not one of all these heavy losses was the work of the generals; nor does Philip hold any of these places because you were persuaded to concede it to him by the treaty of peace. The losses are due to these men and to their corruption. If then he evades these points, and tries to mislead you by speaking of every other possible subject, this is how you must receive his attempt. 'We are not sitting in judgement upon any general,' you must say, 'nor are you on your trial for the things of which you speak. Do not tell us whether some one else may not also be responsible for the ruin of the Phocians: prove to us that no responsibility attaches to yourself. Why do you tell us now of the alleged iniquities of Demosthenes, instead of accusing him when his report was under examination? For such an omission alone you deserve to perish. {336} Do not speak of the beauty of peace, nor of its advantages. No one holds you responsible for the city's having made peace. But show that it was not a shameful and discreditable peace; that we have not since been deceived in many ways; that all was not lost. It is for all these things that the responsibility has been proved to be yours. And why, even to this hour, do you praise the man who has done us all this evil?' If you keep a watch upon him thus, he will have nothing to say; and then he will lift up his voice here, in spite of all his vocal exercises, to no purpose.

{337} And yet perhaps it is necessary for me to speak about his voice also. For of this too, I am told, he is extremely proud, and expects to carry you away by his declamation. But seeing that you used to drive him away and hiss him out of the theatre and almost stone him, when he was performing the tragic story of Thyestes or of the Trojan War, so that at last he gave up his third-rate playing, you would be acting in the most extraordinary way if, now that he has wrought countless ills, not on the stage, but in the most important affairs in the public life of the state, you listened to him for his fine voice. {338} By no means must you do this, or give way to any foolish sentiment. Rather reflect, that if you were testing the qualifications of a herald, you would then indeed look for a fine voice; but when you are testing those of an ambassador, or a man who claims the administration of any public business, you must look for an upright man—a man who bears himself proudly indeed, as your representative, but seeks no more than equality with yourselves—as I myself refused to pay respect to Philip, but did pay respect to the captives, whom I saved, and never for a moment drew back; whereas Aeschines rolled at Philip's feet, and chanted his paeans, while he looks down upon you. {339} And further, whenever you notice that cleverness or a good voice or any other natural advantage has been given to an honest and public-spirited man, you ought all to congratulate him and help him to cultivate his gift; for the gift is an advantage in which you all share, as well as he. But when the gift is found in a corrupt and villainous man, who can never resist the chance of gain, then you should exclude him from your presence, and give a harsh and hostile reception to his words: for villainy, which wins from you the reputation of ability, is the enemy of the State. {340} You see what great troubles have fallen upon the city, through those qualities which have brought renown to Aeschines. But whereas all other faculties are more or less independent, the gift of eloquence, when it meets with hostility from you who listen, is a broken thing. Listen, then, to the defendant as you would listen to a corrupt villain, who will not speak a single word of truth.

{341} Observe also that the conviction of the defendant is in every way expedient, not only on all other grounds, but even when you consider our relations with Philip himself. For if ever Philip finds himself compelled to give the city any of her rights, he will change his methods. As it is, he has chosen to deceive the people as a whole, and to show his favours to a few persons; whereas, if he learns that these men have perished, he will prefer for the future to act in the interest of yourselves collectively, in whose hands all power rests. {342} If, however, he intends to persist in his present domineering and outrageous insolence, you will, by getting rid of these men, have rid the city of those who would do anything in the world for him. For when they have acted as they have done, with the expectation of having to pay the penalty in their minds, what do you think they will do, if you relax your severity towards them? Where is the Euthycrates,[n] or the Lasthenes, or the traitor of any description, whom they will not outdo? {343} And who among all the rest will not be a worse citizen, when he sees that, for those who have sold themselves, the friendship of Philip serves, in consequence, for revenue, for reputation, and for capital; while to those who have conducted themselves uprightly, and have spent their own money as well, the consequences are trouble, hatred, and ill will from a certain party. Let it not be so. It is not for your good—whether you regard your reputation or your duty towards Heaven or your safety or any other object, that you should acquit the defendant; but rather that you should avenge yourselves upon him, and make him an example in the eyes of all your fellow citizens and of the whole Hellenic world.

FOOTNOTES

[1] This body was composed of life-members, the archons passing into it annually at the conclusion of their term of office. A certain religious solemnity attached to it, and it was generally respected as a public-spirited and high- minded body.

[2] [Greek: p_os: ti;].

[3] Hesiod, Works and Days, 761.

[4] Euripides, Phoenix fragment.

[5] [Greek: adeia, aischuv_e.].

THE END