Demosthenes

It is said, too, that the speech which Apollodorus used in order to secure the conviction of Timotheus the general in an action for debt was written for him by Demosthenes, and likewise the speeches which Apollodorus used against Phormio and Stephanus, in which cases Demosthenes properly won discredit. For Phormio contended against Apollodorus with a speech which Demosthenes had written for him,[*](Or. xxxvi.) the orator thus simply selling to the disputants, as it were from one and the same cutlery-shop,[*](See chapter iv. 1.) the knives with which to wound each other.

Moreover, of his public orations, those against Androtion[*](Or.. xxii.) and Timocrates[*](Or. xxiv.) and Aristocrates[*](Or. xxiii.) were written for others to pronounce, before he had as yet entered public life; for it appears that these speeches were produced when he was twenty-seven or twenty-eight years of age. But he himself delivered the speech against Aristogeiton,[*](Or. xxv.) as well as the one On the Immunities,[*](Or. xx.) at the instance, as he himself says, of Ctesippus the son of Chabrias, but as some say, because he was wooing the mother of this young man.

However, he did not marry this woman, but had a certain woman of Samos to wife, as Demetrius the Magnesian tells us in his work On Persons of the Same Name. Whether the speech denouncing the treacherous embassage of Aeschines[*](Or. xix.) was delivered or not, is uncertain; and yet Idomeneus says that Aeschines got off by only thirty votes. But this would seem to be untrue, if we are to judge by the written speeches of both orators On the Crown.[*](See the second note on xxiv. 1 f.) For neither of them speaks clearly and distinctly of that contention as one which came to trial. This question, however, will have to be decided by others.

The political attitude of Demosthenes was manifest even while peace still lasted, for he would let no act of the Macedonian pass uncensured, but on every occasion kept rousing and inflaming the Athenians against him. Therefore Philip also made most account of him; and when Demosthenes came to Macedonia in an embassy of ten,[*](In 346 B.C. they obtained the so-called Peace of Philocrates.) Philip listened indeed to them all, but took most pains to answer his speech.

As regards all other marks of honour and kindly attention, however, Philip did not treat Demosthenes as well as the others, but courted rather the party of Aeschines and Philocrates. And so when these lauded Philip as most powerful in speaking, most fair to look upon, and, indeed, as a most capable fellow-drinker, Demosthenes had to say in bitter raillery that the first encomium was appropriate for a sophist, the second for a woman, and the third for a sponge, but none of them for a king.