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PERSONAL AND PUBLIC CHARACTER.

To all the invectives of Eschines, then, and the calumnies cast upon my private life, hear my honest and plain reply. If you know me to be such as he has described and I have never lived anywhere but among you then let me not be suffered to utter one word, be the merits of my administration ever so perfect, but rise up this instant and condemn me. If, on the contrary, you know and believe that I am far better than him, and sprung from better men; that I and mine are in no way inferior to any others of moderate pretensions (I would speak without offence)-then give him no credit for his other statements, which are all manifestly fictions of the same mould, but continue to me henceforth the same confidence which you have. But you, Æschines, with all your crafty malice, have been simple enough to believe, in good sooth, that I should turn away from the subject of my conduct and policy in order to deal with your calumnies. I shall do no such thing; I shall proceed instantly to the most sifting discussion. of those measures which you have been distorting and running down; and afterward I shall advert to the ribaldry you have so shamefully poured forth, if indeed there be any wish to hear that exposed.

WHAT ÆSCHINES SHOULD HAVE DONE.

The crimes laid to my charge are many and grave; they are such as the laws visit with heavy, nay with the severest punishment. If Eschines saw me

acting injuriously toward the State, especially if I were doing the things he has been declaiming and ranting about, it was his duty to enforce the penal laws against me while facts were recent; if he saw me committing an impeachable offence, he ought to have impeached me, and thus dragged me before you to justice; if he saw me illegally propounding, he should have proceeded against me for Illegal Proposition; for never can he with any justice assail Ctesiphon through me; and yet it is plain that, had he any hope of convicting me, he

never would have accused Ctesiphon. But if he saw me doing any of those other things which he is now attacking and running down, or saw me in any way whatever injuring your interests, there are statutes for all such cases, and penalties, and sentences condemning to heavy and bitter punishments. All these he might have enforced against me; and had he done so, and pursued his course against me, then, indeed, his charges would be consistent with his conduct. But now, departing from the straightforward and the just path, and shunning all accusation at the time, he trumps up, after so long an interval, his collected complaints, and invectives, and scurrilities. Then he accuses me, but he prosecutes him; he envelops his whole proceedings with the fiercest hatred of me, and, without even meeting me fairly, endeavors to rob another of his good name.

It is easy, then, to see that all the charges against me are as little founded in justice and in truth as those. Nevertheless I am desirous of examining them, each and all, especially his falsehoods touching the Peace and the Embassy, respecting which he has transferred to me his own delinquencies and those of his associate, Philocrates.

THE PEACE WITH PHILIP.

After the Phocian war broke out, not through me, for I had not then entered into public life, you were at first inclined to save the Phocians, although well aware of their misconduct, and to rejoice at the loss of the Thebans, with whom you were offended, and not unreasonably or unjustly, for they had not borne their good fortune at Leuctra with moderation. Then the whole Peloponnesus was rent in divisions, and neither the enemies of the Spartans were powerful enough to overthrow them, nor were those who, through Spartan influence, had been formerly placed at the head of the peninsular cities, any longer in possession of them; but there prevailed among them and the other Greek states, an unexplained strife and perturbation. Philip perceiving this for it was not difficult to see lavished his bribes among the traitors everywhere, and put all the

states in collision and conflict with one another; then, as they all fell into a mistaken or a profligate policy, he took advantage of it, and grew in strength at their expense. But when it became evident that the Thebans, worn out with the length of the war, after all their insolence, must be under the necessity, in their present reverses, of flying to you for refuge, Philip, to prevent this, and obstruct the union of those states, proffered peace to you, succor to them. What, then, enabled him thus to overreach you, who were, I might almost say, wilfully deceiving yourselves? It must be admitted that the other Greek states, either from cowardice or infatuation, or both, would give no assistance, either in money or in men, or in any other way, to you, who were carrying on a long and uninterrupted war for the common benefit of all, as the facts plainly show; and you, not unfairly or unnaturally angry at this, lent a willing ear to Philip's offers. The peace, then, which you granted to him was the consequence of these circumstances, and not of my efforts, as Eschines has falsely alleged.

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THE OFFICIAL CONDUCT OF DEMOSTHENES.

Those possessions which Philip seized and kept be-fore I entered into public life, before I began to debate, I say nothing of; for I do not consider them as concerning me at all. But those which, ever since I came forward, he has been prevented from seizing upon, of them I shall remind you, and shall render my account by a single observation. A prospect of great advantage opened to Philip. In the Greek states, not one or two, but all, there shot up a crop of traitors, mercenary and abandoned, men hateful to the gods, such as no one's memory served him to recollect at any former period of time. Engaging these supporters and fellowlaborers, Philip seduced the Greeks, already ill-disposed and seditiously inclined, to a worse disposition, deceiving some, bribing others, corrupting the rest in every way; and split into many factions those who ought to have had all one only common interest-that of preventing his aggrandizement. But in this state of things,

and in the prevailing ignorance of all the Greeks as to the mischief which really existed and was growing apace, your duty, Athenians, is to examine what course it was expedient for the country to choose and pursue, while you call me to account for what was done; for the man who then assumed the conduct of affairsthat man am I. ..

I would now ask whosoever most blames our policy, what part he would rather the country had taken that of those who have contributed so largely to the disasters and disgraces which have befallen Greece-among whom may be reckoned the Thessalonians and their associates; or the part of those who suffered all that happened, in the hope of working their own individual aggrandizement-among whom may be classed the Arcadians, Argives, and Messenians? But many, or rather all of them have fared worse than ourselves; and indeed had Philip, as soon as his object was attained, gone straightway home, and remained thenceforward at peace, offering no kind of injury either to his allies or to the other Greek states, still they who had done nothing to resist his aggressions would have been exposed to complaint and to blame. But if he stripped all alike of their dignity, their sovereignty, their freedom, nay, of their form of government, whenever he had the power, did you not follow the most glorious of all counsels when you listened to me?

I come back to this point: What ought the country to have done, Æschines, when it saw Philip preparing to assume the dominion and government of all Greece? Or what was I to urge or to propound in the Councils of Athens ?-(for the very place is material)-I who knew that from all the time up to the very day when I first mounted the rostrum, my country had ever struggled for supremacy, and honor, and glory, and had lavished more blood and more treasure for her own renown and the interests of all Greece, than any other state had ever risked for its individual benefit; I, who saw that very Philip, with whom our conflict for command and sovereignty was maintained, have his eye torn out, his collar-bone fractured, his hand and his leg mutilated, abandoning to Fortune whatever part of

his body she chose to take, so that the rest might survive to honor and glory?

Yet even then no one would have dared to say that in a man bred at an obscure and paltry town like Pella, such magnanimity could be engendered as to make him entertain the desire of subjugating Greece, or form in his mind such a plan, while in you, who are in Athens, and day by day contemplate the achievements of your ancestors in speeches and spectacles, such poorness of spirit could be bred, that willingly and of your own accord you should surrender to him the liberties of Greece. That is what no one would have dared to say. It remains then to confess, as a necessary consequence, that whatever he attempted of injury to you, you might justly resist. This, therefore, you did from the first, naturally and properly. This I advised and propounded all the time I was in public life. I admit it. But what ought I to have done? That I earnestly demand of you.

He who seizes on Euboea, and rears a fortress over against Attica, and lays his hands on Megara, and occupies Oreum, and destroys Porthmus, and establishes Philistides as tyrant of Oreum, and Clitarchus of Eretria, and takes possession of the Hellespont, and besieges Byzantium, and razes to the ground some of the Greek cities, while he sends back their exiles to others-is he, I demand, who does all this a wrong-doer, a breaker of treaties, a disturber of the peace, or is he not? For if not, and if Greece must be what we proverbially call a "Mysian prey," while the Athenians yet had life and being, assuredly I was undertaking a bootless task in making these statements, and the country was doing a bootless thing in listening to my counsels-and then let all the faults committed, and all the errors be mine! But if some one was required to oppose Philip, who, save the people of Athens, could be found fit for the task? Such, then, was my course of policy; and seeing that he threatened the freedom of all mankind, I opposed him, and persevered in foretelling and in forewarning you against yielding to him. And he it was, Æschines, who broke the peace by the capture of our ships-not this country. Produce the Decrees and his letter, and read the documents in their order. For by attending to them,

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