Demosthenes says proudly, in a famous passage of his immortal De Corona, that even in presence of his life's failure, even after all he had attempted had been wrecked by circumstances, he would not recall one act of his life, one argument in his speeches, no, not by the heroes that stood the brunt of battle at Marathon, by the memory of all those who died for their country's liberty!
The dark shadows of his later years.
§ 60. We may all applaud this noble self-panegyric, but not the irritating agitation which he had adopted and continued for fifteen years against the Macedonian supremacy, and which involved his country in further distresses, and cost him and his brother-agitators their lives. For the very means he used to carry on his policy of revolt were more than
doubtful in their honesty, and have thrown a dark shade upon his memory. The fact is, as I have already said, that while Phocion, the enemy of the democratic policy, is above all suspicion, both contemporaries and survivors had their doubts about Demosthenes.
His professional character as an advocate.
I need not discuss here the allegation that he made speeches for money on opposite sides in the successive trials of the same case. The fact appears to me clear enough, for it is only evaded by his panegyrists with their stock expedient of declaring one of such opposing speeches, though accepted by the best ancient critics, to be spurious. But the morals of the bar from that day to this are so peculiar—I will not say loose—as to make the layman hesitate in offering an opinion. That a man should take fees for a case in which he cannot appear, or retain them when he is debarred by lucrative promotion from appearing for his client, seems to be consistent with the morality of the modern bar. Why then try Demosthenes by a severer standard?
The affair of Harpalus.
But a larger question arises when we find him arraigned for embezzling a sum of money brought to Athens by a fugitive defaulter from Alexander's treasury, and moreover convicted of the embezzlement. The chorus of modern critics, with a very occasional exception, cry out that of course the accusation was false, and the verdict simply a political move to escape the wrath of the formidable Macedonian. But the facts remain, and this moreover
among them, that the principal accuser of Demosthenes was his brother-patriot Hypereides, who afterwards suffered death for the anti-Macedonian cause[147:1].
Was the verdict against Demosthenes just?