Greek Texts & Translations

19.72I am informed that he has become so proficient in effrontery and hardihood that he will disavow all his acts—his reports, his promises, his deceptions of the city—as though he were not on trial before a jury that knows the whole truth, and that he will denounce first the Lacedaemonians,then the Phocians, and then Hegesippus. That is buffoonery, nay, barefaced impudence. 19.73Whatever he may say just now about the Phocians or the Lacedaemonians or Hegesippus,—that they did not receive Proxenus, that they are irreligious, that they are—anything he can say to their disadvantage,—surely all that was finished and done with before the return of the envoys to Athens, and therefore could not have stood in the way of the deliverance of the Phocians. Who says so? Why, Aeschines here, the defendant himself. 19.74For he did not allege in his report that, but for the Lacedaemonians, but for their refusal to receive Proxenus, but for Hegesippus, but for this or that, the Phocians would have been delivered. He passed over all that, and declared explicitly that before his return he had persuaded Philip to deliver the Phocians, to repopulate Boeotia, and to put the whole business into your hands; that it would all be accomplished within two or three days, and that in revenge the Thebans had set a price upon his head. 19.75Do not, then, listen to anything that had been done by Lacedaemonians or Phocians before he made his report; do not let him talk about it; do not permit him to denounce the Phocians and call them rascals. You saved the Lacedaemonians in old time, and those accursed Euboeans lately, and many other peoples, not because they were virtuous, but because their safety profited Athens, as that of the Phocians would today. What transgression did the Phocians or the Lacedaemonians or you or anyone else commit after Aeschines' speech, that the promises made by him to you then should not be fulfilled? 19.76Ask him that question. He can point to none. For he made his lying report, you believed it, the Phocians heard of it, surrendered, and perished, all within a period of five days only. Hence it is clearly evident that the ruin of the Phocians was nothing but a concoction of deceit and artifice. For during the time when Philip was unable to march by reason of the peace, but was already laying his plans, he sent for the Lacedaemonians, promising to do everything for them, so that the Phocians might not, through your agency, secure their help. 19.77But when he had reached Thermopylae, and when the Lacedaemonians, detecting the snare, had withdrawn, he sent Aeschines as his agent in advance for your deception, lest, when you discovered that he was acting in the interest of the Thebans, he should be involved once more in delays and fighting and waste of time with the Phocians resisting him, and you helping them. In this way he hoped to obtain complete mastery without a struggle. And so it fell out. Aeschines, then, must not escape punishment for deceiving you, merely because Philip deceived the Lacedaemonians and the Phocians. That would be unjust indeed.

19.78If as an offset to the Phocians and Thermopylae and all our other losses he tells you that the city still retains the Chersonese, I adjure you not to accept that excuse. In addition to the wrongs he has done you by his embassy, you must not suffer him by his defence also to fasten upon the city the reproach that, while stealthily securing some of your own possessions, you made sacrifice of the safety of your allies. You did no such thing. Peace was concluded; the Chersonese was secure; and then for the four ensuing months the Phocians were not imperilled, until you were deceived, and the Phocians destroyed, by this man's mendacity. 19.79Moreover, you will find that the Chersonese is in greater danger now than then. When would it have been easier to punish Philip for wrongful aggression upon that country—before he forestalled us at Thermopylae, or today? Surely far easier then! What, then, does it profit us that we still retain the Chersonese, if the man, who would have invaded it if he could, is freed from the apprehensions and perils that deterred him?

19.80I hear of another argument he will use: he will wonder why his accuser is Demosthenes and not one of the Phocians. I had better explain at once how the matter stands. The best and most respectable of the expatriated Phocians, being exiled and in distress, are living peaceably, and none of them would be willing to incur private animosity on account of the misfortunes of the nation, while those who might have done anything for a fee find that there is no one to pay it them.