On the False Embassy

Read the decree and the records, and call the witnesses.

(The Decree, Records, and Depositions are read)

What do you imagine were the prayers offered by Philip when he made libation? Or by the Thebans? Surely they implored strength and victory for themselves and their allies, weakness and defeat for the allies of the Phocians. In that prayer Aeschines joined. He invoked a curse on his own fatherland. It is for you to make that curse recoil upon his own head.

So, when he took his departure, he was breaking a law whose penalty is death; after his arrival, he is again proved guilty of conduct that deserves death; and his earlier misconduct of this business of the embassy had been bad enough to bring him to death. You have therefore to consider what punishment shall be rigorous enough to afford a retribution adequate to all these transgressions.