Demosthenes, Speeches (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose; rhetoric] [word count] [lemma count] [Dem.].
<<Dem. 18.122 Dem. 18.133 (Greek) >>Dem. 18.141

18.129I am at no loss for information about you and your family; but I am at a loss where to begin. Shall I relate how your father Tromes was a slave in the house of Elpias, who kept an elementary school near the Temple of Theseus, and how he wore shackles on his legs and a timber collar round his neck? or how your mother practised daylight nuptials in an outhouse next door to Heros the bone-setter, note and so brought you up to act in tableaux vivants and to excel in minor parts on the stage? However, everybody knows that without being told by me. Shall I tell you how Phormio the boatswain, a slave of Dio of Phrearrii, uplifted her from that chaste profession? But I protest that, however well the story becomes you, I am afraid I may be thought to have chosen topics unbecoming to myself. 18.130I will pass by those early days, and begin with his conduct of his own life; for indeed it has been no ordinary life, but such as is an abomination to a free people. Only recently— recently, do I say? Why it was only the day before yesterday when he became simultaneously an Athenian and an orator, and, by the addition of two syllables, transformed his father from Tromes to Atrometus, and bestowed upon his mother the high sounding name of Glaucothea, although she was universally known as the Banshee, a nickname she owed to the pleasing diversity of her acts and experiences—it can have no other origin. 18.131You were raised from servitude to freedom, and from beggary to opulence, by the favor of your fellow-citizens, and yet you are so thankless and ill-conditioned that, instead of showing them your gratitude, you take the pay of their enemies and conduct political intrigues to their detriment. I will not deal with speeches which, on a disputable construction, may be called patriotic, but I will recall to memory acts by which he was proved beyond doubt to have served your enemies.

18.132You all remember Antiphon, the man who was struck off the register, and came back to Athens after promising Philip that he would set fire to the dockyard. When I had caught him in hiding at Peiraeus, and brought him before the Assembly, this malignant fellow raised a huge outcry about my scandalous and undemocratic conduct in assaulting citizens in distress and breaking into houses without a warrant, and so procured his acquittal. 18.133Had not the Council of the Areopagus, becoming aware of the facts, and seeing that you had made a most inopportune blunder, started further inquiries, arrested the man, and brought him into court a second time, the vile traitor would have slipped out of your hands and eluded justice, being smuggled out of the city by our bombastic phrase-monger. As it was, you put him on the rack and then executed him, and you ought to have done the same to Aeschines. 18.134In fact, the Council of the Areopagus knew well that Aeschines had been to blame throughout this affair, and therefore when, after choosing him by vote to speak in support of your claims to the Temple at Delos, by a misapprehension such as has often been fatal to your public interests, you invited the cooperation of that Council and gave them full authority, they promptly rejected him as a traitor, and gave the brief to Hypereides. On this occasion the ballot was taken at the altar, and not a single vote was cast for this wretch. 18.135To prove the truth of my statement, please call the witnesses.Witnesses

[We, Callias of Sunium, Zeno of Phlya, Cleon of Phalerum, Demonicus of Marathon, on behalf of all the councillors, bear witness for Demosthenes that, when the people elected Aeschines state-advocate before the Amphictyons in the matter of the temple at Delos, we in Council judged Hypereides more worthy to speak on behalf of the state, and Hypereides was accordingly commissioned.]

18.136Thus by rejecting this man from his spokesmanship, and giving the appointment to another, the Council branded him as a traitor and an enemy to the people.

So much for one of his spirited performances. Is it not just like the charges he brings against me? Now let me remind you of another. Philip had sent to us Pytho of Byzantium in company with an embassy representing all his allies, hoping to bring dishonor upon Athens and convict her of injustice. Pytho was mightily confident, denouncing you with a full spate of eloquence, but I did not shrink from the encounter. I stood up and contradicted him, refusing to surrender the just claims of the commonwealth, and proving that Philip was in the wrong so conclusively that his own allies rose and admitted I was right; but Aeschines took Philip's side throughout, and bore witness, even false witness, against his own country.

18.137Nor did that satisfy him. At a later date he was caught again in the company of the spy Anaxinus at the house of Thraso. Yet a man who secretly met and conversed with a spy sent by the enemy must have been himself a spy by disposition and an enemy of his country. To prove the truth of my statement, please call the witnesses.Witnesses

[Teledemus, son of Cleon, Hypereides, son of Callaeschrus, Nicomachus, son of Diophantus, bear witness for Demosthenes, and have taken oath before the Generals that to their knowledge Aeschines, son of Atrometus, of Cothocidae, comes by night to the house of Thraso and holds communication with Anaxinus, who has been proved to be a spy from Philip. These depositions were lodged with Nicias on the third day of Hecatombaeon.]



Demosthenes, Speeches (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose; rhetoric] [word count] [lemma count] [Dem.].
<<Dem. 18.122 Dem. 18.133 (Greek) >>Dem. 18.141

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