[The evidence is read.]
{268} Such was I in my relation to the State. And as to my private life, unless you all know that I was open-hearted and generous and at the disposal of all who had need of me, I am silent; I prefer to tell you nothing, and to produce no evidence whatever, to show whether I ransomed some from the enemy, or helped others to give their daughters in marriage, or rendered any such services. {269} For my principle may perhaps be expressed thus. I think that one who has received a kindness ought to remember it all his life; but that the doer of the kindness should forget it once for all; if the former is to behave like a good man, the latter like one free from all meanness. To be always recalling and speaking of one's own benefactions is almost like upbraiding the recipients of them. I will do nothing of the kind, and will not be led into doing so. Whatever be the opinion that has been formed of me in these respects, with that I am content.
{270} But I desire to be rid of personal topics, and to say a little more to you about public affairs. For if, Aeschines, you can mention one of all those who dwell beneath the sun above us, Hellene or foreigner, who has not suffered under the absolute sway, first of Philip, and now of Alexander, so be it! I concede that it is my fortune or misfortune, whichever you are pleased to call it, that has been to blame for everything. {271} But if many of those who have never once even seen me or heard my voice have suffered much and terribly—and not individuals alone, but whole cities and nations—how much more just and truthful it is to regard the common fortune (as it seems to be) of all mankind, and a certain stubborn drift of events in the wrong direction, as the cause of these sufferings. {272} Such considerations, however, you discard. You impute the blame to me, whose political life has been lived among my own fellow countrymen—and that, though you know that your slander falls in part (if not entirely) upon all of them, and above all upon yourself. For if, when I took part in the discussion of public affairs, I had had absolute power, it would have been possible for all of you, the other orators, to lay the blame on me. {273} But if you were present at every meeting of the Assembly; if the city always brought forward questions of policy for public consideration; if at the time my policy appeared the best to every one, and above all to you (for it was certainly from no goodwill that you relinquished to me the hopes, the admiration, the honours, which all attached themselves to my policy at that time, but obviously because the truth was too strong for you, and you had nothing better to propose); then surely you are guilty of monstrous iniquity, in finding fault to-day with a policy, than which, at the time, you could propose nothing better. {274} Among all the rest of mankind, I observe that some such principles as the following have been, as it were, determined and ordained. If a man commits a deliberate crime, indignation and punishment are ordained against him. If he commits an involuntary mistake, instead of punishment, he is to receive pardon. If, without crime or mistake, one who has given himself up wholly to that which seems to be for the advantage of all has, in company with all, failed to achieve success, then it is just, not to reproach or revile such a man, but to sympathize with him. {275} Moreover, it will be seen that all these principles are not so ordained in the laws alone. Nature herself has laid them down in her unwritten law, and in the moral consciousness of mankind. Aeschines, then, has so far surpassed all mankind in brutality and in the art of misrepresentation, that he actually denounces me for things which he himself mentioned under the name of misfortunes.
{276} In addition to everything else, as though he had himself always spoken straightforwardly and in loyalty, he bade you keep your eyes on me carefully, and make sure that I did not mislead or deceive you. He called me 'a clever speaker', 'a wizard', 'a sophist', and so on: just as if it followed that when a man had the first word and attributed his own qualities to another, the truth was really as he stated, and his hearers would not inquire further who he himself was, that said such things. But I am sure that you all know this man, and are aware that these qualities belong to him far more than to me. And again, {277} I am quite sure that my cleverness—yes, let the word pass; though I observe that the influence of a speaker depends for the most part on his audience; for in proportion to the welcome and the goodwill which you accord to each speaker is the credit which he obtains for wisdom;—I am sure, I say, that if I too possess any such skill, you will all find it constantly fighting on your behalf in affairs of State, never in opposition to you, never for private ends; while the skill of Aeschines, on the contrary, is employed, not only in upholding the cause of the enemy, but in attacking any one who has annoyed him or come into collision with him anywhere. He neither employs it uprightly, nor to promote the interests of the city. {278} For a good and honourable citizen ought not to require from a jury, who have come into court to represent the interests of the community, that they shall give their sanction to his anger, or his enmity, or any other such passion; nor ought he to come before you to gratify such feelings. It were best that he had no such passions in his nature at all; but if they are really inevitable, then he should keep them tame and subdued. Under what circumstances, then, should a politician and an orator show passion? {279} When any of the vital interests of his country are at stake; when it is with its enemies that the People has to deal: those are the circumstances. For then is the opportunity of a loyal and gallant citizen. But that when he has never to this day demanded my punishment, either in the name of the city or in his own, for any public—nor, I will add, for any private—crime, he should have come here with a trumped-up charge against the grant of a crown and a vote of thanks, and should have spent so many words upon it—that is a sign of personal enmity and jealousy and meanness, not of any good quality. {280} And that he should further have discarded every form of lawsuit against myself, and should have come here to-day to attack the defendant, is the very extremity of baseness. It shows, I think, Aeschines, that your motive in undertaking this suit was your desire, not to exact vengeance for any crime, but to give a display of rhetoric and elocution. Yet it is not his language, Aeschines, that deserves our esteem in an orator, nor the pitch of his voice, but his choice of the aims which the people chooses, his hatred or love of those whom his country loves or hates. {281} He whose heart is so disposed will always speak with loyal intent; but he who serves those from whom the city foresees danger to herself, does not ride at the same anchor as the People, and therefore does not look for safety to the same quarter. But I do, mark you! For I have made the interests of my countrymen my own, and have counted nothing as reserved for my own private advantage. What? {282} You have not done so either? How can that be, when immediately after the battle you went your way as an ambassador to Philip, the author of the calamities which befell your country at that time; and that, despite the fact that until then you always denied this intimacy[n] with him, as every one knows? But what is meant by a deceiver of the city? Is it not one who does not say what he thinks? Upon whom does the herald justly pronounce the curse? Is it not upon such a man as this? With what greater crime can one charge a man who is an orator, than that of saying one thing and thinking another? Such a man you have been found to be. {283} And after this do you open your mouth, or dare to look this audience in the face? Do you imagine that they do not know who you are? or that the slumber of forgetfulness has taken such hold upon them all, that they do not remember the speeches which you used to deliver during the war, when you declared with imprecations and oaths that you had nothing to do with Philip, and that I was bringing this accusation against you, when it was not true, to satisfy my personal enmity? {284} But so soon as the news of the battle had come, you thought no more of all this, but at once avowed and professed that you stood on a footing of friendship and guest-friendship with him; though these were nothing but your hireling-service under other names; for upon what honest or equal basis could Aeschines, the son of Glaucothea the tambourine—player,[n] enjoy the guest-friendship, or the friendship, or the acquaintance of Philip? I cannot see. In fact, you had been hired by him to ruin the interests of these your countrymen. And yet, though your own treason has been so plainly detected—though you have been an informer against yourself after the event—you still revile me, and reproach me with crimes of which, you will find, any one is more guilty than I.
{285} Many a great and noble enterprise, Aeschines, did this city undertake and succeed in, inspired by me; and she did not forget them. It is a proof of this, that when, immediately after the event, the People had to elect one who should pronounce the oration over the dead, and you were nominated, they did not elect you, for all your fine voice, nor Demades, who had just negotiated the Peace, nor Hegemon,[n] nor any other member of your party: they elected me. And when you and Pythocles[n] came forward in a brutal and shameless fashion, God knows! and made the same charges against me as you are making again to-day, and abused me, the People elected me even more decidedly. {286} And the reason you know well; but I will tell it you nevertheless. They knew for themselves both the loyalty and zeal which inspired my conduct of affairs, and the iniquity of yourself and your friends. For what you denied with oaths when our cause was prosperous, you admitted in the hour of the city's failure; and those, accordingly, who were only enabled by the misfortunes of their country to express their views without fear, they decided to have been enemies of their own for a long while, though only then did they stand revealed.{287} And further, they thought that one who was to pronounce an oration over the dead, and to adorn their valour, should not have come beneath the same roof, nor shared the same libation,[n] as those who were arrayed against them; that he should not there join with those who with their own hands had slain them, in the revel[n] and the triumph-song over the calamities of the Hellenes, and then come home and receive honour—that he should not play the mourner over their fate with his voice, but should grieve for them in his heart. What they required they saw in themselves and in me, but not in you; and this was why they appointed me, and not any of you. {288} Nor, when the people acted thus, did the fathers and brothers of the slain, who were then publicly appointed to conduct the funeral, act otherwise. For since (in accordance with the ordinary custom) they had to hold the funeral-feast in the house of the nearest of kin, as it were, to the slain, they held it at my house, and with reason; for though by birth each was more nearly akin to his dead than I, yet none stood nearer to them all in common. For he who had their life and their success most at heart, had also, when they had suffered what I would they had not, the greatest share of sorrow for them all.
(To the clerk ) {289} Read him the epitaph which the city resolved to inscribe above them at the public cost; (to Aeschines) that even by these very lines, Aeschines, you may know that you are a man destitute of feeling, a dishonest accuser, an abominable wretch!
The Inscription.[n]
These for their country, fighting side by side,
By deeds of arms dispelled the foemen's pride.
heir lives they saved not, bidding Death make clear—
Impartial Judge!—their courage or their fear.
For Greece they fought, lest, 'neath the yoke brought low,
In thraldom she th' oppressor's scorn should know.
Now in the bosom of their fatherland
After their toil they rest—'tis God's command.
'Tis God's alone from failure free to live;[n]
Escape from Fate to no man doth He give.
{290} Do you hear, Aeschines [in these very lines], 'Tis God's alone from failure free to live'? Not to the statesman has he ascribed the power to secure success for those who strive, but to the gods. Why then, accursed man, do you revile me, for our failure, in words which I pray the gods to turn upon the heads of you and yours?
{291} But, even after all the other lying accusations which he has brought against me, the thing which amazed me most of all, men of Athens, was that when he mentioned what had befallen the city, he did not think of it as a loyal and upright citizen would have thought. He shed no tears; he felt no emotion of sorrow in his heart: he lifted up his voice, he exulted, he strained his throat, evidently in the belief that he was accusing me, though in truth he was giving us an illustration, to his own discredit, of the utter difference between his feelings and those of others, at the painful events which had taken place. {292} But surely one who professes, as Aeschines professes now, to care for the laws and the constitution, ought to show, if nothing else, at least that he feels the same griefs and the same joys as the People, and has not, by his political profession, ranged himself on the side of their opponents. That you have done the latter is manifest today, when you pretend that the blame for everything is mine, and that it is through me that the city was plunged in trouble: though it was not through my statesmanship or my policy, gentlemen, {293} that you began to help the Hellenes: for were you to grant me this—that it was through me that you had resisted the dominion which was being established over the Hellenes—you would have granted me a testimonial which all those that you have given to others together could not equal. But neither would I make such an assertion; for it would be unjust to you; nor, I am sure, would you concede its truth: and if Aeschines were acting honestly, he would not have been trying to deface and misrepresent the greatest of your glories, in order to satisfy his hatred towards me.