AESCHINES (389-314 B.C.)
Professor R. C. Jebe says of Aeschines, the rival of Demosthenes for supremacy at Athens, that when the Rhodians asked him to teach them oratory, he replied that he did not know it himself. He took pride in being looked upon as a representative of natural oratorical genius who had had little help from the traditions of the schools. "If, however, Aeschines was no rhetorical artist," writes Doctor Jebb, "he brought to public speaking the twofold training of the actor and the scribe. He had a magnificent voice under perfect musical control. 'He compares me to the sirens,' says Aeschines of his rival."
First known as an actor, playing "tritagonist" in the tragedies of Sophocles and the other great Athenian dramatists, Aeschines was afterwards clerk to one of the minor officials at Athens; then secretary to Aristophon and Eubulos, well-known public men, and later still secretary of the ekklesia or assembly.
The greatest event of his life was his contest with Demosthenes 'De Corona' (Over the Crown). When Ktesiphon proposed that Athens should bestow a wreath of gold on Demosthenes for his public services, Aechines, after the bill proposing it had come before the assembly, challenged it and gave notice of his intention to proceed against Ktesiphon for proposing an unconstitutional measure. One of the allegations in support of its unconstitutionally was that "to record a bill describing Demosthenes as a public benefactor was to deposit a lying document among the public archives." The issues were thus joined between Aeschines and Demosthenes for one of the most celebrated forensic contests in history. Losing the case Aeschines went into banishment. He died at Samos, B.C. 314, in his seventy-fifth year. He is generally ranked next to Demosthenes among Greek orators. For the following from the oration of Aeschines, the reader is under obligations to Professor Jebb's admirable translation.
AGAINST CROWNING DEMOSTHENES (Against Ktesiphon)
Our days have not fallen on the common chances of mortal life. We have been set to bequeath a story of marvels to posterity. Is not the king of Persia, he who cut through Athos, and bridged the Hellespont, he who demands earth and water from the Greeks, he who in his letters presumes to style himself lord of all men from the sunrise to the sunset, is he not struggling at this hour, no longer for authority over others, but for his own life? Do you not see the men who delivered the Delphian temple invested not only with that glory but with the leadership against Persia? While Thebes— Thebes, our neighbor city—has been in one day swept from the face of Greece—justly it may be in so far as her general policy was erroneous, yet in consequence of a folly which was no accident, but the judgment of heaven. The unfortunate Lacedaemonians, though they did but touch this affair in its first phase by the occupation of the temple,—they who once claimed the leadership of Greece,— are now to be sent to Alexander in Asia to give hostages, to parade their disasters, and to hear their own and their country's doom from his lips, when they have been judged by the clemency of the master they provoked. Our city, the common asylum of the Greeks, from which, of old, embassies used to come from all Greece to obtain deliverance for their several cities at our hands, is now battling, no more for the leadership of Greece, but for the ground on which it stands. And these things have befallen us since Demosthenes took the direction of our policy. The poet Hesiod will interpret such a case. There is a passage meant to educate democracies and to counsel cities generally, in which he warns us not to accept dishonest leaders. I will recite the lines myself, the reason, I think, for our learning the maxims of the poets in boyhood being that we may use them as men:—
"Oft hath the bad man been the city's bane;
Oft hath his sin brought to the sinless pain:
Oft hath all-seeing Heaven sore vexed the town
With dearth and death and brought the people down;
Cast down their walls and their most valiant slain,
And on the seas made all their navies vain!"
Strip these lines of their poetic garb, look at them closely, and I think you will say these are no mere verses of Hesiod—that they are a prophecy of the administration of Demosthenes, for by the agency of that administration our ships, our armies, our cities have been swept from the earth. … "O yes," it will be replied, "but then he is a friend of the constitution." If, indeed, you have a regard only to his delicacy you will be deceived as you were before, but not if you look at his character and at the facts. I will help you to estimate the characteristics which ought to be found in a friend of the constitution; in a sober-minded citizen. I will oppose to them the character that may be looked for in an unprincipled revolutionist. Then you shall draw your comparison and consider on which part he stands—not in his language, remember, but in his life. Now all, I think, will allow that these attributes should belong to a friend of the constitution: First, that he should be of free descent by both parents so that the disadvantage of birth may not embitter him against those laws which preserve the democracy. Second, that he should be able to show that some benefit has been done to the people by his ancestors; or, at the worst, that there had been no enmity between them which would prompt him to revenge the misfortunes of his fathers on the State. Third, he should be virtuous and temperate in his private life, so that no profligate expense may lead him into taking bribes to the hurt of the people. Next, he should be sagacious and able to speak—since our ideal is that the best course should be chosen by the intelligence and then commended to his hearers by the trained eloquence of the orator, —though, if we cannot have both, sagacity must needs take rank before eloquence. Lastly, he must have a stout heart or he may play the country false in the crisis of danger or of war. The friend of oligarchy must be the opposite of all this. I need not repeat the points. Now, consider: How does Demosthenes answer to these conditions?
[After accusing Demosthenes of being by parentage half a Scythian,
Greek in nothing but language, the orator proceeds: ]—
In his private life, what is he? The tetrarch sank to rise a pettifogger, a spendthrift, ruined by his own follies. Then having got a bad name in this trade, too, by showing his speeches to the other side, he bounded on the stage of public life, where his profits out of the city were as enormous as his savings were small. Now, however, the flood of royal gold has floated his extravagance. But not even this will suffice. No wealth could ever hold out long against vice. In a word, he draws his livelihood not from his own resources but from your dangers. What, however, are his qualifications in respect to sagacity and to power of speech? A clever speaker, an evil liver! And what is the result to Athens? The speeches are fair; the deeds are vile! Then as to courage I have a word to say. If he denied his cowardice or if you were not aware of it, the topic might have called for discussion, but since he himself admits in the assemblies and you know it, it remains only to remind you of the laws on the subject. Solon, our ancient lawgiver, thought the coward should be liable to the same penalties as the man who refuses to serve or who has quitted his post. Cowardice, like other offenses, is indictable.
Some of you will, perhaps, ask in amazement: Is a man to be indicted for his temperament? He is. And why? In order that every one of us fearing the penalties of the law more than the enemy may be the better champion of his country. Accordingly, the lawgiver excludes alike the man who declines service, the coward, and the deserter of his post, from the lustral limits in the market place, and suffers no such person to receive a wreath of honor or to enter places of public worship. But you, Ktesiphon, exhort us to set a crown on the head to which the laws refuse it. You by your private edict call a forbidden guest into the forefront of our solemn festival, and invite into the temple of Dionysos that dastard by whom all temples have been betrayed. … Remember then, Athenians, that the city whose fate rests with you is no alien city, but your own. Give the prizes of ambition by merit, not by chance. Reserve your rewards for those whose manhood is truer, whose characters are worthier. Look at each other and judge not only with your ears but with your eyes who of your number are likely to support Demosthenes. His young companions in the chase or the gymnasium? No, by the Olympian Zeus! He has not spent his life in hunting or in any healthful exercise, but in cultivating rhetoric to be used against men of property. Think of his boastfulness when he claims by his embassy to have snatched Byzantium out of the hands of Philip, to have thrown the Acharnians into revolt, to have astonished the Thebans with his harangue! He thinks that you have reached the point of fatuity at which you can be made to believe even this—as if your citizen were the deity of persuasion instead of a pettifogging mortal! And when at the end of his speech, he calls as his advocates those who shared his bribes, imagine that you see upon this platform where I now speak before you, an array drawn up to confront their profligacy—the benefactors of Athens: Solon, who set in order the Democracy by his glorious laws, the philosopher, the good legislator, entreating you with the gravity which so well became him never to set the rhetoric of Demosthenes above your oaths and above the laws; Aristides, who assessed the tribute of the Confederacy, and whose daughters after his death were dowered by the State—indignant at the contumely threatened to justice and asking: Are you not ashamed? When Arthmios of Zeleia brought Persian gold to Greece and visited Athens, our fathers well-nigh put him to death, though he was our public guest, and proclaimed him expelled from Athens and from all territory that the Athenians rule; while Demosthenes, who has not brought us Persian gold but has taken bribes for himself and has kept them to this day, is about to receive a golden wreath from you! And Themistokles, and they who died at Marathon and Plataea, aye, and the very graves of our forefathers—do you not think they will utter a voice of lamentation, if he who covenants with barbarians to work against Greece shall be—crowned!