Greek Texts & Translations

19.192To show you, then, that these men are the basest and most depraved of all Philip's visitors, private as well as official,—yes, of all of them,—let me tell you a trifling story that has nothing to do with the embassy. After Philip had taken Olynthus, he was holding Olympian games, ^note and had invited all sorts of artists to the religious celebration and the festival. 19.193At the entertainment at which he crowned the successful competitors, he asked Satyrus, the comedian of our city, why he was the only guest who had not asked any favor; had he observed in him any illiberality or discourtesy towards himself? Satyrus, as the story goes, replied that he did not want any such gift as the others were asking; what he would like to ask was a favor which Philip could grant quite easily, and yet he feared that his request would be unsuccessful. 19.194Philip bade him speak out, declaring with the easy generosity of youth that there was nothing he would not do for him. Thereupon Satyrus told him that Apollophanes of Pydna had been a friend of his, and that after his death by assassination his kinsmen in alarm had secretly removed his daughters, who were then children, to Olynthus. These girls had been made captive when the town was taken, and were now in Philip's hands, and of marriageable age. 19.195“I earnestly beg you,” he went on, “to bestow them on me. At the same time I wish you to understand what sort of gift you will be giving me, if you do give it. It will bring me no gain, for I shall provide them with dowries and give them in marriage; and I shall not permit them to suffer any treatment unworthy of myself or of their father.” It is said that, when the other guests heard this speech, there was such an outburst of applause and approval that Philip was strongly moved, and granted the boon. And yet Apollophanes was one of the men who had slain Philip's own brother Alexander.

19.196Now let us compare the banquet of Satyrus with another entertainment which these men attended in Macedonia; and you shall see whether there is any sort of resemblance. These men had been invited to the house of Xenophron, a son of Phaedimus, who was one of the Thirty Tyrants, and off they went; but I declined to go. When the drinking began, Xenophron introduced an Olynthian woman,—a handsome, but a freeborn and, as the event proved, a modest girl. 19.197At first, I believe, they only tried to make her drink quietly and eat dessert; so Iatrocles told me the following day. But as the carouse went on, and they became heated, they ordered her to sit down and give them a song. The poor girl was bewildered, for she did not wish, and she did not know how, to sing. Then Aeschines and Phryno declared that it was intolerable impertinence for a captive,—and one of those ungodly, pernicious Olynthians too,—to give herself such airs. “Call a servant,” they cried; “bring a whip, somebody.” In came a flunkey with a horsewhip, and—I suppose they were tipsy, and it did not take much to irritate them,when she said something and began to cry, he tore off her dress and gave her a number of lashes on the back. 19.198Maddened by these indignities, she jumped to her feet, upset the table, and fell at the knees of Iatrocles. If he had not rescued her, she would have perished, the victim of a drunken orgy, for the drunkenness of this blackguard is something terrible. The story of this girl was told even in Arcadia, at a meeting of the Ten Thousand ^note; it was related by Diophantus at Athens in a report which I will compel him to repeat in evidence; and it was common talk in Thessaly and everywhere.

19.199With all this on his conscience the unclean scoundrel will dare to look you in the face, and before long he will be declaiming in sonorous accents about his blameless life. It makes me choke with rage. As if the jury did not know all about you: first the acolyte, ^note reading the service-books while your mother performed her hocus-pocus, reeling and tumbling, child as you were, with bacchanals and tipsy worshippers;