On the Crown

Let me begin, men of Athens, by beseeching all the Powers of Heaven that on this trial I may find in Athenian hearts such benevolence towards me as I have ever cherished for the city and the people of Athens. My next prayer is for you, and for your conscience and honor. May the gods so inspire you that the temper with which you listen to my words shall be guided, not by my adversary—

that would be monstrous indeed!— but by the laws and by the judicial oath, by whose terms among other obligations you are sworn to give to both sides an impartial hearing. The purpose of that oath is, not only that you shall discard all prejudice, not only that you shall show equal favor, but also that you shall permit every litigant to dispose and arrange his topics of defence according to his own discretion and judgement.

Among many advantages which Aeschines holds over me in this contention, there are two, men of Athens, of great moment. In the first place, I have a larger stake on the issue; for the loss of your favor is far more serious to me than the loss of your verdict to him. For me, indeed—but let me say nothing inauspicious at the outset of my speech: I will only say that he accuses me at an advantage. Secondly, there is the natural disposition of mankind to listen readily to obloquy and invective, and to resent self-laudation.

To him the agreeable duty has been assigned; the part that is almost always offensive remains for me. If as a safeguard against such offence, I avoid the relation of my own achievements, I shall seem to be unable to refute the charges alleged against me, or to establish my claim to any public distinction. Yet, if I address myself to what I have done, and to the part I have taken in politics, I shall often be obliged to speak about myself. Well, I will endeavor to do so with all possible modesty; and let the man who has initiated this controversy bear the blame of the egoism which the conditions force upon me.

You must all be agreed, men of Athens, that in these proceedings I am concerned equally with Ctesiphon, and that they require from me no less serious consideration. Any loss, especially if inflicted by private animosity, is hard to bear; but to lose your goodwill and kindness is the most painful of all losses, as to gain them is the best of all acquisitions.

Such being the issues at stake, I implore you all alike to listen to my defence against the accusations laid, in a spirit of justice. So the laws enjoin—the laws which Solon, who first framed them, a good democrat and friend of the people, thought it right to validate not only by their enactment but by the oath of the jury;

not distrusting you, if I understand him aright, but perceiving that no defendant can defeat the charges and calumnies which the prosecutor prefers with the advantage of prior speech, unless every juryman receives with goodwill the pleas of the second speaker, as an obligation of piety to the gods by whom he has sworn, and forms no final conclusion upon the whole case until he has given a fair and impartial hearing to both sides.

It appears that I have today to render account of the whole of my private life as well as of my public transactions. I must therefore renew my appeal to the gods; and in your presence I now beseech them, first that I may find in your hearts such benevolence towards me as I have ever cherished for Athens, and secondly that they will guide you to such a judgement upon this indictment as shall redound to the good repute of the jury, and to the good conscience of every several juryman.

If then Aeschines had confined his charges to the matters alleged in the prosecution, I should have immediately addressed my defence to the resolution of the Council; but as he has wastefully devoted the greater part of his speech to irrelevant topics, mostly false accusations, I conceive it to be both fair and necessary, men of Athens, to say a few words first on those matters, lest any of you, misled by extraneous arguments, should listen with estrangement to my justification in respect of the indictment.

To his abusive aspersion of my private life, I have, you will observe, an honest and straightforward reply. I have never lived anywhere but in your midst. If then you know my character to be such as he alleges, do not tolerate my voice, even if all my public conduct has been beyond praise, but rise and condemn me incontinently. But if, in your judgement and to your knowledge, I am a better man and better born than Aeschines, if you know me and my family to be, not to put it offensively, as good as the average of respectable people, then refuse credence to all his assertions, for clearly they are all fictitious, and treat me today with the same goodwill which throughout my life you have shown to me in many earlier contentions.

Malicious as you are, Aeschines, you were strangely innocent when you imagined that I should turn aside from the discussion of public transactions to reply to your calumnies. I shall do nothing of the sort: I am not so infatuated. Your false and invidious charges against my political life I will examine; but later, if the jury wish to hear me, I will return to your outrageous ribaldry.

The crimes he has laid to my charge are many, and to some of them the law has assigned severe and even capital punishment. But the purpose of this prosecution goes further: it includes private malice and violence, railing and vituperation, and the like; and yet for none of these accusations, if made good, is there any power at all in the state to inflict an adequate penalty, or anything like it.

It is not right to debar a man from access to the Assembly and a fair hearing, still less to do so by way of spite and jealousy. No, by heavens, men of Athens, it is neither just, nor constitutional, nor honest! If he ever saw me committing crimes against the commonwealth, especially such frightful crimes as he described just now so dramatically, his duty was to avail himself of the legal penalties as soon as they were committed, impeaching me, and so putting me on my trial before the people, if my sins deserved impeachment, or indicting me for breach of the constitution, if I had proposed illegal measures. For, of course, if he prosecutes Ctesiphon now on my account, it is impossible that he would not have indicted me, with a certain hope of conviction!

Yet if he detected me in any of the acts which he has recounted to my prejudice, or in any other iniquity, there are statutes dealing with those offences, punishments, legal processes, trials involving severe penalties and heavy fines; and any of these proceedings he might have taken. Had he so acted, had he in that way employed the methods applicable to my case, his denunciations would have been consistent with his conduct;

but in fact he has deserted the path of right and justice, he has flinched from the proof of recent guilt, and then, after a long interval, he makes a hotchpotch of imputation and banter and scurrility, and stands on a false pretence, denouncing me, but indicting Ctesiphon. He sets in the forefront of the controversy his private quarrel with me, in which he has never confronted me fairly; yet he is avowedly seeking to disfranchise somebody else.

There are many other arguments, men of Athens, to be pleaded on Ctesiphon’s behalf, but this surely is eminently reasonable, that the honest course was to fight out our own quarrels by ourselves, not to turn aside from our antagonism and try to find some one else to injure. That is carrying iniquity too far!

It is a fair inference that all his accusations are equally dishonest and untruthful. I wish, however, to examine them one by one, and especially the falsehoods he told to my discredit about the peace and the embassy, attributing to me what was really done by himself with the aid of Philocrates. It is necessary, men of Athens, and not improper, to remind you of the position of affairs in those days, so that you may consider each transaction with due regard to its occasion.

When the Phocian war began—not by my fault, for I was still outside politics—you were at first disposed to hope that the Phocians would escape ruin, although you knew that they were in the wrong, and to exult over any misfortune that might befall the Thebans, with whom you were justly and reasonably indignant because of the immoderate use they had made of the advantage they gained at Leuctra. The Peloponnesus was divided. The enemies of the Lacedaemonians were not strong enough to destroy them; and the aristocrats whom the Lacedaemonians had put into power had lost control of the several states. In those states and everywhere else there was indiscriminate strife and confusion.

Philip, observing these conditions, which were apparent enough, spent money freely in bribing traitorous persons in all the cities, and tried to promote embroilment and disorder. He based his designs on the errors and follies of others, and the growth of his power was perilous to us all. When it was evident that the Thebans, now fallen from arrogance to disaster, and much distressed by the prolongation of the war, would be compelled to seek the protection of Athens, Philip, to forestall such an appeal and coalition, offered peace to you and succor to them.

Now what contributed to his success, when he found you ready to fall into his trap almost eagerly, was the baseness, or, if you prefer the term, the stupidity, or both, of the other Greek states. You were fighting a long and incessant war for purposes in which, as the event has proved, they were all concerned, and yet they helped you neither with money, nor with men, nor with anything else; and so, in your just and natural indignation, you readily accepted Philip’s suggestion. The peace conceded to him at that time was due to the causes I have named, and not, as Aeschines maliciously insists, to me; and the misdeeds and the corruption of Aeschines and his party during that peace will be found, on any honest inquiry, to be the true cause of our present troubles.