On the False Embassy

Citizens of Athens, I do not doubt that you are all pretty well aware that this trial has been the center of keen partisanship and active canvassing, for you saw the people who were accosting and annoying you just now at the casting of lots.[*](For the selection of jurors.) But I have to make a request which ought to be granted without asking, that you will all give less weight to private entreaty or personal influence than to the spirit of justice and to the oath which you severally swore when you entered that box. You will reflect that justice and the oath concern yourselves and the commonwealth, whereas the importunity and party spirit of advocates serve the end of those private ambitions which you are convened by the laws to thwart, not to encourage for the advantage of evil-doers.

Now I observe that men who enter public life with honest intentions, even after they have submitted to scrutiny, do still acknowledge a perpetual responsibility. But Aeschines, the defendant, reverses this practice. Before coming into court to justify his proceedings, he has put out of the way one of the men who called him to account, and the others he is constantly threatening. So he is trying to introduce into politics a most dangerous and deplorable practice; for if a man who has undertaken and administered any public function can get rid of accusers not by his honesty but by the fear he inspires, the people will soon lose all control of public affairs.

While I have entire confidence that I shall prove that this man is guilty of serious delinquencies, and that he deserves the most severe punishment, yet, in spite of that assurance, I have a misgiving, which I will explain to you quite frankly. It appears to me, men of Athens, that the trials which come before you are affected quite as much by the conditions of the hour as by the facts; and I am afraid that the long lapse of time since the embassy has inclined you to forget or to acquiesce in these iniquities.

I will, then, suggest a method by which you may nevertheless reach a just conclusion and give a righteous verdict today. By consideration among yourselves, gentlemen, you should form a true conception of what should be included in the vindication which the state requires of any ambassador. He is responsible then, in the first place, for the reports he has made; secondly, for the advice he has offered; thirdly, for his observance of your instructions; then there is the question of times and opportunities; and, to crown all, whether he has done his business corruptly or with integrity.

Why are these the topics of inquiry? Your conclusions are derived from the ambassador’s reports: you reach a right decision if they are true, a wrong decision if they are false. The advice of ambassadors you regard as the more trustworthy because it is given by men who presumably understand their own mission.

No ambassador, then, ought ever to be convicted of defective or mischievous counsels. Thirdly, when he has been expressly instructed what to say and what to do by resolution of the Assembly, it is his duty to conduct his business according to such instructions. Very well; but how does the question of time arise? Because, men of Athens, in important transactions opportunities are often short-lived: once willfully surrendered and betrayed to the enemy, they cannot be recovered, do what you will.

Next, as for the question of bribery or no bribery, of course you are agreed that it is a scandalous and abominable offence to accept money for acts injurious to the commonwealth. The author of the statute, however, made no such distinction; he forbade the acceptance of rewards absolutely, holding, as I suppose, that the man who takes them and is thereby corrupted can no longer be trusted by the state as a judge of sound policy.

If, then, I can establish by clear proofs that the reports of the defendant, Aeschines, were entirely untruthful, and that he prevented the Assembly from hearing the truth from me; that his counsels were totally opposed to your true interests; that he disobeyed all your instructions when on embassy; that by his waste of time many important opportunities were lost to the city; and finally that for all these delinquencies he, as well as Philocrates, accepted presents and rewards; pronounce him guilty and exact a penalty adequate to his crimes. But if I fail to prove all these five charges, or any one of them, then call me an impostor, and acquit him.

I have many further charges to add, such as must excite universal abhorrence; but, by way of preface, I will first remind you of what doubtless most of you remember,—of the party with which Aeschines at first ranged himself in politics, and of the speeches which he thought fit to make in opposition to Philip. In this way I hope to satisfy you that his early acts and speeches supply abundant proof of his present corruption.

Aeschines, then, was the first man in Athens, as he claimed at the time in a speech, to perceive that Philip had designs against Greece, and was corrupting some of the magnates of Arcadia. It was he who, with Ischander, son of Neoptolemus, as his understudy, addressed the Council, and addressed the Assembly, on this subject, and persuaded them to send ambassadors to all the Greek states to convene a conference at Athens for the consideration of war with Philip.

It was he who afterwards, on his return from Arcadia, gave a report of the fine long orations which he said he had delivered as your spokesman before the Ten Thousand at Megalopolis in reply to Philip’s champion Hieronymus, and he made a long story of the enormous harm which corrupt statesmen in the pay of Philip were doing not only to their own countries but to the whole of Greece.

So on the strength of his policy at that time, and of the sample he had exhibited of his conduct, he was actually appointed as one of the ambassadors when you were induced by Aristodemus, Neoptolemus, Ctesiphon and others, who had brought entirely misleading reports from Macedonia, to send an embassy to negotiate peace with Philip. He was chosen, not as one who would make traffic of your interests, not as one who had any confidence in Philip, but as one of the party that was to keep an eye on the rest, for in view of his early speeches, and of his known hostility to Philip, it was natural that you should all have such an opinion of the man.

Then he came to me and proposed that we should act together on the embassy, being especially urgent that we should jointly keep watch upon that infamous scoundrel Philocrates. And until after our return from the first embassy I at least, men of Athens, had no suspicion that he was corrupt and had already sold himself. For apart from the speeches which, as I said, he had made on former occasions, he rose at the first of the two assemblies at which you discussed terms of peace, and began with an exordium which I believe I can repeat to you in the very words he used:

If Philocrates, men of Athens, had given many days to studying how best he could thwart the peace, I do not think he could have found a better way than the present proposal. Such a peace as this I for one will never advise the city to make, so long as a single Athenian remains alive; yet I do say that we ought to make peace. In such terms he spoke, concisely and with moderation.