The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1

by Demosthenes

And 'when a man goes to the cockpit[n] and walks about with Pittalacus'—he added more to the same effect—'surely,' said he, 'you know what to think of him.' Well, Aeschines, these same verses will now exactly serve my turn against you, and if I quote them to the jury, the quotation will be true and apposite. 'But whoso in the company delights' of Philocrates, and that when he is an ambassador, 'Of him I ne'er enquired, for well I trow' that he has taken money, as did Philocrates who does not deny it.

{246} He attempts to insult others by labelling them hack-writers[n] and sophists. He shall himself be proved liable to these very imputations. The verses he quoted are derived from the Phoenix of Euripides—a play which has never to this day been acted either by Theodorus or Aristodemus, the actors under whom Aeschines always played third-rate parts, though it was performed by Molon, and no doubt by other actors of former times. But the Antigone of Sophocles has often been acted by Theodorus and often by Aristodemus; and in this play there are some admirable and instructive verses, which he must know quite well by heart, since he has often delivered them himself, but which he has omitted to quote. {247} For you know, I am sure, that in every tragedy it is, as it were, the special privilege of third-rate actors to play in the rôle of tyrants and sceptred kings. Consider, then, these excellent lines, placed by the poet in the mouth of our Creon-Aeschines in this play—lines which he neither repeated to himself to guide him as an ambassador, nor yet quoted to the jury. (To the clerk.) Read the passage.

Verses from the 'Antigone' of Sophocles.

To learn aright the soul and heart and mind
Of any man—for that, device is none,
Till he be proved in government and law,
And so revealed. For he who guides the State,
Yet cleaves not in his counsels to the best,
But from some fear in prison locks his tongue,
Is in mine eyes, as he hath ever been,
Vilest of men. And him, who sets his friend
Before his land, I count of no esteem.
For I—be it known to God's all-viewing eye—
Would ne'er keep silence, seeing the march of doom
Upon this city—doom in safety's stead,
Nor ever take to me as mine own friend
My country's foe.' For this I know, that she,
Our country, is the ship that bears us safe,
And safe aboard her, while she sails erect,
We make good friends.

{248} None of these lines did Aeschines ever repeat to himself during his mission. Instead of preferring his country he thought that to be friend and guest-friend of Philip was much more important and profitable for himself, and bade a long farewell to the wise Sophocles. He saw the 'march of doom' draw near, in the campaign against the Phocians; but he gave no warning, no announcement of what was to come. On the contrary, he helped to conceal it, he helped to carry out the doom, he prevented those who would have given warning—{249} not remembering that 'Our country is the ship that bears us safe, and safe aboard her' his mother with the help of her initiations and purifications and the property of the clients, on whom she lived, reared up these sons of hers to their destined greatness;[n] while his father, who kept an elementary school, as I am told by my elders, near the temple of the Hero-Physician,[n] made a living, such as he could indeed, but still on the same ship. The sons, who had received money as under-clerks and servants in all the magistrates' offices, were finally elected clerks by you, and for two years continued to get their living in the Round Chamber;[n] and Aeschines was just now dispatched as your ambassador—from this same ship. He regarded none of these things. {250} He took no care that the ship should sail erect. Nay, he capsized her; he sank the ship; he did all that he could to bring her into the power of the enemy. What then? Are you not a sophist? Aye, and a villanous one. Are you not a hack? Aye, and one detested of Heaven—for you passed over the scene which you had so often performed and knew well by heart, while you sought out a scene which you had never acted in your life, and produced the passage in the hope of injuring one of your fellow citizens.

{251} And now examine his speech about Solon. He told us that the statue of Solon, with his hand concealed in the drapery of his robe, was erected as an illustration of the self-restraint of the orators of that day. (This was in the course of a scurrilous attack upon the impetuosity of Timarchus.) But the Salaminians tell us that this statue was erected less than fifty years ago, whereas some two hundred and forty years have passed between the time of Solon and the present day; so that not only was the artist, who modelled him in this attitude, not living in Solon's day, but even his grandfather was not. {252} That then is what he told the jury, copying the attitude as he did so. But that which it would have done his country far more good to see—the soul and the mind of Solon—he did not copy. No, he did the very reverse. For when Salamis had revolted from Athens and the death-penalty had been decreed against any one who proposed to attempt its recovery, Solon, by singing, at the risk of his own life,[n] a lay which he had composed, won back the island for his country, and wiped out her disgrace: {253} while Aeschines, when the king and all the Hellenes had decided that Amphipolis was yours, surrendered and sold it, and supported Philocrates, who proposed the resolution for this purpose. It is indeed worth his while (is it not?) to remember Solon! Nor was he content with acting thus in Athens; for when he had gone to Macedonia, he did not even mention the name of the place which it was the object of his mission to secure. This, in fact, he reported to you himself, in words which doubtless you remember: 'I too had something to say about Amphipolis; but in order that Demosthenes might have an opportunity of speaking upon the subject, I left it to him.' {254} Upon which I came forward and denied that Aeschines had left to me anything which he was anxious to say to Philip; he would rather have given any one a share in his lifeblood than in his speech. The truth is, I imagine, that he had taken money; and as Philip had given him the money in order that he might not have to restore Amphipolis, he could not speak in opposition to Philip's case. Now (to the clerk) take this lay of Solon's and read it; and (to the jury) then you will know how Solon used to hate all such men as this.

{255} It is not when you are speaking, Aeschines, but when you are upon an embassy, that you should keep your hand within your robe. But on the Embassy you held out your hand, and held it open; you brought shame to your countrymen: and do you here assume a solemn air and recite in those practised tones the miserable phrases that you have learned by heart, and expect to escape the penalty for all your heinous crimes—even if you do go round with a cap on your head,[n] uttering abuse against me? (To the clerk.) Read the verses.

Solon's Lay.

The Father's voice hath spoken,
Whose word is Destiny,
And the blest Gods have willed it,
The Gods who shall not die;
That ne'er shall the Destroyer
Prevail against our land;
The Dread Sire's valiant Daughter
Guards us with eye and hand.
Yet her own sons, in folly,
Would lay their country low,
For pelf; and in her leaders
An heart of sin doth grow.
For them—their pride's fell offspring—
There waiteth grievous pain;
For sated still, they know not
Their proud lust to contain.
Not theirs, if mirth be with them,
The decent, peaceful feast;
To sin they yield, and sinning
Rejoice in wealth increased.
No hallowed treasure sparing,
Nor people's common store,
This side and that his neighbour
Each robs with havoc sore.
The holy law of Justice
They guard not. Silent she,
Who knows what is and hath been,
Awaits the time to be.
Then cometh she to judgement,
With certain step, tho' slow;
E'en now she smites the city,
And none may 'scape the blow.
To thraldom base she drives us,
From slumber rousing strife,—
Fell war of kin, destroying
The young, the beauteous life.
The foemen of their country
In wicked bands combine,
Fit company; and stricken
The lovely land doth pine.
These are the Wrong, the Mischief,
That pace the earth at home;
But many a beggared exile
To other lands must roam—
Sold, chained in bonds unseemly;
For so to each man's hall
Comes home the People's Sorrow,
And leaps the high fence-wall.
No courtyard door can stay it;
It follows to his side,
Flee tho' he may, and crouching
In inmost chamber hide.
Such warning unto Athens
My spirit bids me sound,
That Lawlessness in cities
Spreads evil all around;
But Lawfulness and Order
Make all things good and right,
Chaining Sin's hands in fetters,
Quenching the proud soul's light,
Smoothing the rough, the sated
Staying, and withering
The flowers, that, fraught with ruin,
From fatal seed upspring.
The paths of crooked justice
Are turned into straight;
The ways of Pride grow gentle,
The ways of Strife and Hate;
Then baleful Faction ceases,
Then Health prevails alway,
And Wisdom still increases,
Beneath Law's wholesome sway.

{256} You hear, men of Athens, how Solon speaks of men like these, and of the gods, who, he says, preserve the city. It is my belief and my hope that this saying of his, that the gods preserve our city, is true at all times; but I believe that all that has happened in connexion with the present examination is, in a sense, a special proof of the goodwill of some unseen power towards the city. {257} Consider what has happened. A man who as ambassador did a work of great wickedness, and has surrendered countries in which the gods should have been worshipped by yourselves and your allies, has disfranchised one who accepted the challenge[n] to prosecute him. To what end? To the end that he himself might meet with no pity or mercy for his own iniquities. Nay, more; while prosecuting his victim he deliberately set himself to speak evil of me; and again, before the People, he threatened to enter an indictment against me, and said more to the same effect. And to what end? To the end that I, who had the most perfect knowledge of all his acts of villany, and had followed them closely throughout, might have your full indulgence in prosecuting him. {258} Aye, and through postponing his appearance before you continually up to the present moment, he has been insensibly brought to a time when, on account of what is coming upon us, if for no other reason, it is neither possible nor safe for you to allow him (after his corruption) to escape unscathed. For though, men of Athens, you ought always to execrate and to punish those who are traitors and corrupt, to do so at this time would be more than ever seasonable, and would confer a benefit upon all mankind in common. {259} For a disease, men of Athens, an awful disease has fallen upon Hellas—a disease hard to cope with, and requiring abundant good fortune, and abundant carefulness on your own part. For the most notable men in their several cities, the men who claim[n] to lead in public affairs, are betraying their own liberty—unhappy men!—and bringing upon themselves a self-chosen servitude, under the milder names of friendship and companionship with Philip, and other such phrases; while the other citizens, and the sovereign bodies in each city, however composed, whose duty it was to punish these men and slay them out of hand, are so far from taking any such action, that they admire and envy them, and every one would be glad to be in the same case. {260} Yet it is from this very cause—it is through entertaining ambitions like these—that the Thessalians, who up to yesterday or the day before had lost thereby only their paramount position[n] and their dignity as a state, are now already being stripped of their very liberty; for there are Macedonian garrisons in some of their citadels. This same disease it is which has invaded the Peloponnese and brought about the massacres in Elis, infecting the unhappy people of that country with such insanity and frenzy, that in order to be lords over one another and to gratify Philip, they murder their kinsmen and fellow citizens. {261} Not even here has the disease been stayed: it has penetrated Arcadia and turned it upside-down; and now many of the Arcadians, who should be no less proud of liberty than yourselves—for you and they alone are indigenous peoples—are declaring their admiration for Philip, erecting his image in bronze, and crowning him; and, to complete the tale, they have passed a resolution that, if he comes to the Peloponnese, they will receive him within their walls. {262} The Argives have acted in exactly the same way. These events, I say it in all solemnity and earnestness, call for no small precautions: for this plague, men of Athens, that is spreading all around us, has now found its way to Athens itself. While then we are still safe, ward it off, and take away the citizenship of those who first introduced it. Beware lest otherwise you realize the worth of the advice given you this day, only when there is no longer anything that you can do. {263} Do you not perceive, men of Athens, how vivid and plain an example has been afforded you by the unhappy Olynthians? The destruction of those wretched men was due to nothing so much as to conduct like that of which I speak. You can test this clearly if you review their history. {264} For at a time when they possessed only 400 cavalry, and numbered not more than 5,000 men in all, since the Chalcidians were not yet all united under one government, the Spartans came against them with a large force, including both army and fleet (for you doubtless remember that at that period the Spartans were virtually masters both of land and sea); and yet, though this great force came against them, the Olynthians lost neither the city nor any single fortress, but won many battles, killed three of the enemy's commanders, and finally concluded the war on their own terms.[n] {265} But when some of them began to take bribes, and the people as a whole were foolish enough, or rather unfortunate enough, to repose greater confidence in these men than in those who spoke for their own good; when Lasthenes roofed his house with the timber which came from Macedonia, and Euthycrates was keeping a large herd of cattle for which he had paid no one anything; when a third returned with sheep, and a fourth with horses, while the people, to whose detriment all this was being done, so far from showing any anger or any disposition to chastise men who acted so, actually gazed on them with envy, and paid them honour and regarded them as heroes—{266} when, I say, such practices were gaining ground in this way, and corruption had been victorious; then, though they possessed 1,000 cavalry and numbered more than 10,000 men; though all the surrounding peoples were their allies; though you went to their assistance with 10,000 mercenaries and 50 ships, and with 4,000 citizen-soldiers as well, none of these things could save them. Before a year of the war had expired they had lost all the cities in Chalcidice, while Philip could no longer keep pace with the invitations of the traitors, and did not know which place to occupy first. {267} Five hundred horsemen were betrayed by their own commanders and captured by Philip, with their arms—a larger number than were ever before captured by any one. And the men who acted thus were not ashamed to face the sun or the earth—the soil of their native land—on which they stood, or the temples, or the sepulchres of the dead, or the disgrace which was bound to follow upon such deeds afterwards. Such is the madness and distraction which corruption engenders. So it is for you—for you, the People—to be wise, to refuse to suffer such things, and to visit them with public chastisement. For it would be monstrous indeed, if, after the terrible condemnation which you passed upon those who betrayed the Olynthians, it were seen that you allowed the criminals who are in your very midst to go unpunished. (To the clerk.) Read the decree passed with reference to the Olynthians.