On the Crown

You will find that I maintained the same character both in domestic and in Hellenic policy. At home I never preferred the gratitude of the rich to the claims of the poor; in foreign affairs I never coveted the gifts and the friendship of Philip rather than the common interests of all Greece.

My remaining task, I think, is to speak of the proclamation and of the audit; for I hope that what I have already said has been sufficient to satisfy you that my policy was the best, and that I have been the people’s friend, and zealous in your service. Yet I pass by the most important of my public actions, first, because I conceive that my next duty is to submit my explanations in respect of the actual charge of illegality, secondly, because, though I say nothing further about the rest of my policy, your own knowledge will serve my purpose equally well.

As for Aeschines’ topsy-turvy miscellany of arguments about the statutes transcribed for comparison,[*](The laws alleged to be violated were posted in court side by side with the law or decree which was the object of the prosecution.) I vow to Heaven that I do not believe that you understand the greater part of them, and I am sure they were quite unintelligible to me. I can only offer a plain, straightforward plea on the rights of the matter. So far from claiming, as he invidiously suggested just now, that I am not to be called to account, I fully admit that all my life long I have been accountable for all my official acts and public counsels;

but for the donations that I promised and gave at my own expense I do say that I am not accountable at any time— you hear that, Aeschines—nor is any other man, though he be one of the nine archons. Is there any law so compact of iniquity and illiberality that, when a man out of sheer generosity has given away his own money, it defrauds him of the gratitude he has earned, drags him before a set of prying informers, and gives them authority to hold an audit of his free donations? There is no such law. If he contradicts me, let him produce the law, and I will be satisfied and hold my peace.