| Demosthenes, Speeches (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose; rhetoric] [word count] [lemma count] [Dem.]. | ||
| <<Dem. 19.296 | Dem. 19.306 (Greek) | >>Dem. 19.314 |
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.
19.307Such was his speech on that occasion; a noble speech, worthy of our Athenian traditions. But after he had visited Macedonia , and beheld his own enemy and the enemy of all Greece , did his language bear the slightest resemblance to those utterances? Not in the least: he bade you not to remember your forefathers, not to talk about trophies, not to carry succor to anybody. As for the people who recommended you to consult the Greeks on the terms of peace with Philip, he was amazed at the suggestion that it was necessary that any foreigner should be convinced when the questions were purely domestic.
19.308And as for Philip,—why, good Heavens, he was a Greek of the Greeks, the finest orator and the most thorough—going friend of Athens you could find in the whole world. And yet there were some queer, ill-conditioned fellows in Athens who did not blush to abuse him, and even to call him a barbarian!
Greece on their account, indignant that they should suffer outrage in an allied country at the hands of Athenian ambassadors.
Arcadia to testify against the agents of Philip.
19.309Is it, then, conceivable that the man who made the earlier of those speeches should also have made the later unless he had been corrupted? Is it possible that the same man who was then inflamed with abhorrence of Atrestidas on account of those Olynthian women and children, should now be content to cooperate with Philocrates, who brought free-born Olynthian ladies to this city for their dishonor? Philocrates is now so notorious for the infamous life he has lived that I need not apply to him any degrading or offensive epithet. When I merely mention that he did bring the ladies, there is not a man in this court, whether on the jury or among the onlookers, who does not know the sequel, and who does not, I am sure, feel compassion for those miserable and unfortunate beings. Yet Aeschines had no compassion for them. He did not shed tears over
19.310No; our discredited ambassador will keep all his tears for himself. Very likely he will bring his children into court and put them in a conspicuous position. But do you, gentlemen of the jury, as you look at those children of his, reflect how many children of your own friends and allies are wanderers, roaming the world in beggary, suffering hardships which they owe to this man; and that they deserve your compassion infinitely more than the offspring of a malefactor and a traitor, while, by adding to the treaty of peace the words and to their posterity, he and his friends robbed your own children even of hope. When you witness his tears, remember that you hold in your power a man who bade you send accusers to
| Demosthenes, Speeches (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose; rhetoric] [word count] [lemma count] [Dem.]. | ||
| <<Dem. 19.296 | Dem. 19.306 (Greek) | >>Dem. 19.314 |
