§ 114. Nausides was sent to oppose Philip at Thermopylae in 352 (see Introd. to First Philippic). Diotimus had a command at sea in 338, and his surrender was demanded by Alexander in 335, as was also that of Charidernus (see n. on Olynthiac III, § 5), who had now been a regular Athenian general for many years, and had been sent to assist Byzantium in 340 (see Speech against Aristocrates, passim).
§ 121. hellebore: supposed in antiquity to cure madness.
§ 122. reveller on a cart, e.g. on the second day of the Anthesteria, when masked revellers rode in wagons and assailed the bystanders with abusive language. Such ceremonial abuse was perhaps originally supposed to have power to avert evil, and occurs in primitive ritual all over the world.
§ 125. the statutable limit. There was a limit of time (differing according to the alleged offence) after which no action could be brought. Demosthenes could not now be prosecuted for any of the offences with which Aeschines charged him.
§ 127. Aeacus, &c.: the judges of the dead in Hades, according to popular legend.
scandal-monger. The Greek word ([Greek: spermologos]) is used primarily of a small bird that pecks up seeds, and hence of a person who picks up petty gossip. (In Acts xvii. 18 it is the word which is applied to St. Paul, and translated 'this babbler'.)
an old band in the market-place: i.e. a rogue. A clerk would perhaps often be found in the offices about the market-place; or the reference may be to the market-place as a centre of gossip.
O Earth, &c. Demosthenes quotes from the peroration of Aeschines' speech.
§ 129. The stories which Demosthenes retails in these sections deal with a time which must have been forty or fifty years before the date of this speech, and probably contain little truth, beyond the facts that Aeschines' father was a schoolmaster (not a slave), and was assisted by Aeschines himself; and that his mother was priestess of a 'thiasos' or voluntary association of worshippers of Dionysus-Sabazios, among whose ceremonies was doubtless one symbolizing a marriage or mystical union between the god and his worshippers. (Whether the form of 'sacred marriage' which was originally intended to promote the fertility of the ground by 'sympathetic magic' entered into the ritual of Sabazios is doubtful.) Such a rite, though probably in fact quite innocent, gave rise to suspicions, of which Demosthenes takes full advantage; and the fact that well-known courtesans (such as Phryne and perhaps Ninus) sometimes organized such 'mysteries' would lend colour to the suspicions.
Hero of the Lancet ([Greek: to kalamit_e aer_oi]). The interpretation is very uncertain (see Goodwin, pp. 339 ff.); and, according as [Greek: kalamos] is taken in the sense of 'lancet', 'splints', or 'bow', editors render the phrase 'hero of the lancet', 'hero of the splints', 'archer-hero' (identified by some with Toxaris, the Scythian physician, whose arrival in Athens in Solon's time is described in Lucian's [Greek: Skuth_es ae Proxenos]). That the Hero was a physician is shown by the Speech on the Embassy, § 249.