§ 277. Epicrates was sent as ambassador to Persia early in the fourth century, and received large presents. According to Plutarch he escaped condemnation; but he may have been tried more than once. The comic poets make fun of his long beard.
who brought the people back from the Peiraeus. Thrasybulus occupied the Peiraeus in 403, secured the expulsion of the Thirty Tyrants from Athens, and restored the democracy.
§ 278. the decree: i.e. the decree by which Epicrates and his colleagues were condemned.
§ 279. for this is the splendid thing: cf. § 120 n.
§ 280. exiled and punished. We should perhaps (with Weil) read [Greek: _e] ('or') for [Greek: kai] ('and').
descendant of Harmodius: i.e. Proxenus, who had been only recently condemned, and is therefore not named.
§ 281. another priestess. According to the scholiast, the reference is to Ninus, a priestess of Sabazios, who was prosecuted by Menecles for making love-potions for young men. The connexion of this offence with the meetings of the initiated is left to be understood.
§ 282. the burden undertaken. Such burdens as the duties of choregus, trierarch, &c., might be voluntarily undertaken, as they were by Demosthenes (see n. on Philippic I. § 36).
§ 287. Cyrebion, or 'Light-as-Chaff', was the nickname of Epicrates, Aeschines' brother-in-law (not the Epicrates of § 277). as a reveller, no doubt in some Dionysiac revel, in which it was not considered decent to take part without a mask. (The original purpose of masks, however, was not to conceal one's identity from motives of shame, though Demosthenes suggests it as a motive here.)
were water flowing upstream. A half-proverbial expression implying that the world was being turned upside-down, when such a person could prosecute for such offences.