laudable ambition: i.e. to get credit for having thought of the ransom of the prisoners.
§ 47. handed in: either to the Clerk or to the Proedroi (the committee of Chairmen of the Assembly).
§ 51. Aeschines states that Philip's invitation was declined because it was suggested that Philip would keep the soldiers sent as hostages.
§ 65. on our way to Delphi. Demosthenes had been one of the Athenian representatives at the meeting of the Amphictyonic Council at Delphi this year.
gave its vote, &c. After the battle of Aegospotami at the end of the Peloponnesian War, the representative of Thebes proposed to the Spartans and their allies that Athens should be destroyed and its inhabitants sold into slavery.
§ 70. read this law over: i.e. that the herald might proclaim it after him.
§ 72. For the Spartans see § 76. The Phocians had treated the Athenians badly when Proxenus was sent to Thermopylae (see Introd. to Speech on Peace). Hegesippus may have opposed the acceptance of Philip's invitation to the Athenians to join him. Aeschines (on the Embassy, §§ 137, 138) mentions no names in connexion with the refusal, but represents it as the sacrifice of a unique opportunity of saving the Phocians (cf. § 51 n.).
§ 76. deceit and cunning, and of nothing else ([Greek: _pasa apat_e_]). The argument is, 'Aeschines will try to allege wrongful acts on the part of the Phocians; but there was no time for such acts in the five days; and this proves that there were no such acts to justify their ruin, and that their overthrow was due to nothing but trickery.' This is better than to translate 'every kind of deceit and trickery was concocted for the ruin of the Phocians'; for this is not the point, nor is it what would be inferred from the fact that there was only a five-days' interval between the speech of Aeschines and the capitulation of the Phocians. There is no need to emend to [Greek: _h_e pasa apat_e_].
on account of the Peace: i.e. of the negotiations for the Peace, before it was finally arranged.
all that they wished: viz. the restoration of the Temple of Delphi to their kinsmen, the Dorians of Mount Parnassus.