Greek Texts & Translations

19.298Men of Athens, you hear the admonitions of the gods. If they are addressed to you in time of war, they bid you beware of your commanders, for commanders are the leaders of warfare; if after conclusion of peace, of your statesmen, for they are your leaders, they have your obedience, by them you may haply be deceived. The oracle also bids you keep the commonwealth together, that all may be of one mind, and may not gratify the enemy. 19.299What do you think, men of Athens? Will Philip be gratified by the deliverance or by the punishment of the man who has done all this mischief? By his deliverance surely; but the oracle bids you strive that the enemy shall not rejoice. Therefore, you are all exhorted by Zeus, by Dione, by all the gods, to punish with one mind those who have made themselves the servants of your enemies. There are foes without; there are traitors within. It is the business of foes to give bribes, of traitors to take bribes, and to rescue those who have taken them.

19.300Moreover, it can be shown by mere human reasoning that it is extremely injurious and dangerous to permit the intimacy of a prominent statesman with men whose purposes are at variance with those of the people. If you will consider by what means Philip acquired his political supremacy and performed his most signal achievements, you will find that it was by buying treachery from willing sellers, and by corrupting leading politicians and stimulating their ambition. 19.301Both these practices it is within your power, if you so choose, to frustrate today, if you will first refuse to listen to the defenders of treachery, and prove that they cannot exercise that authority over you of which they boast, and then punish before the eyes of the world the man who has traitorously sold himself. 19.302You have good reason, men of Athens, to be indignant with every man who by such conduct has thrown overboard your allies, your friends, and those opportunities on which, for any nation, success or failure depends, but with no man more fiercely or more righteously than with Aeschines. For a man who once ranged himself with those who distrusted Philip, and made unassisted the first discovery of Philip's hostility to all Greece, and then became a deserter and a traitor and suddenly appeared as Philip's champion—does he not deserve a hundred deaths? 19.303Yet that such are the facts, he will not be able to deny. For who originally introduced Ischander to you, declaring him to have come as the representative of the Arcadian friends of Athens? Who raised the cry that Philip was forming coalitions in Greece and Peloponnesus while you slept? Who made those long and eloquent speeches, and read the decrees of Miltiades and Themistacles and the oath which our young men take in the temple of Aglaurus ^note? 19.304Was it not Aeschines? Who persuaded you to send embassies almost as far as the Red Sea, declaring that Greece was the object of Philip's designs, and that it was your duty to anticipate the danger and not be disloyal to the Hellenic cause? Was it not Eubulus who proposed the decree, and the defendant Aeschines who went as ambassador to the Peloponnesus? What he said there after his arrival, either in conversation or in public speeches, is best known to himself: what he reported on his return I am sure you have not forgotten. 19.305For he made a speech in which he repeatedly called Philip a barbarian and a man of blood. He told you that the Arcadians were delighted to hear that Athens was really waking up and attending to business. He related an incident which, he said, had filled him with deep indignation. On his journey home he had met Atrestidas travelling from Philip's court with some thirty women and children in his train. He was astonished, and inquired of one of the travellers who the man and his throng of followers were; 19.306and when he was told that they were Olynthian captives whom Atrestidas was bringing away with him as a present from Philip, he thought it a terrible business, and burst into tears. Greece, he sorrowfully reflected, is in evil plight indeed, if she permits such cruelties to pass unchecked. He counselled you to send envoys to Arcadia to denounce the persons who were intriguing for Philip; for, he said, he had been informed that, if only Athens would give attention to the matter and send ambassadors, the intriguers would promptly be brought to justice.