On the False Embassy

And as for Philip,—why, good Heavens, he was a Greek of the Greeks, the finest orator and the most thorough—going friend of Athens you could find in the whole world. And yet there were some queer, ill-conditioned fellows in Athens who did not blush to abuse him, and even to call him a barbarian!

Is it, then, conceivable that the man who made the earlier of those speeches should also have made the later unless he had been corrupted? Is it possible that the same man who was then inflamed with abhorrence of Atrestidas on account of those Olynthian women and children, should now be content to cooperate with Philocrates, who brought free-born Olynthian ladies to this city for their dishonor? Philocrates is now so notorious for the infamous life he has lived that I need not apply to him any degrading or offensive epithet. When I merely mention that he did bring the ladies, there is not a man in this court, whether on the jury or among the onlookers, who does not know the sequel, and who does not, I am sure, feel compassion for those miserable and unfortunate beings. Yet Aeschines had no compassion for them. He did not shed tears over Greece on their account, indignant that they should suffer outrage in an allied country at the hands of Athenian ambassadors.

No; our discredited ambassador will keep all his tears for himself. Very likely he will bring his children into court and put them in a conspicuous position. But do you, gentlemen of the jury, as you look at those children of his, reflect how many children of your own friends and allies are wanderers, roaming the world in beggary, suffering hardships which they owe to this man; and that they deserve your compassion infinitely more than the offspring of a malefactor and a traitor, while, by adding to the treaty of peace the words and to their posterity, he and his friends robbed your own children even of hope. When you witness his tears, remember that you hold in your power a man who bade you send accusers to Arcadia to testify against the agents of Philip.

And so today you have no need to send a mission to Peloponnesus, to make a long journey, or to pay travelling expenses; you have only to advance one by one to this platform, and there cast a just and a righteous vote for your country’s sake against the man who, having at the outset, as I described to you, spoken so eloquently about Marathon and Salamis, about battles and victories, from the moment he set foot on Macedonian soil contradicted his own utterances, forbade you to remember the example of your forefathers, or recall old victories, or carry succor to your friends, or take common counsel with the Greeks, and well-nigh bade you to dismantle the defences of your city.

No more disgraceful speeches have ever been made in your hearing during the whole course of your history. Lives there a man, Greek or barbarian, so boorish, so unversed in history, or so ill-disposed to our commonwealth that, if he were asked the question, Tell me, in all the country that we call Greece and inhabit today, is there an acre that would still bear that name, or remain the home of the Greeks who now possess it, if the heroes of Marathon and Salamis, our forefathers, had not in their defence performed those glorious deeds of valor, is there one man who would not make reply: No; the whole country would have become the prey of the barbarian invaders?

Even among your foes there is not a man who would despoil those heroes of their meed of praise and gratitude; and does an Aeschines forbid you, their own descendants, to commemorate their names—all for the sake of his miserable bribes? There are indeed rewards in which the dead have no part or lot; but the praise that waits on glorious achievements is the peculiar guerdon of those who have gloriously died—for then jealousy is no longer their adversary. Let the man who would rob the dead of their reward be stripped of his own honors: that retribution you will levy on him for your forefathers’ sake. By those speeches of yours, you reprobate, you made havoc of our policy, traducing and disparaging with your tongue the achievements of our forefathers.

And from these performances you emerge a land-owner, a person of high consideration! Take another point. Before he did all that mischief to the commonwealth, he used to admit that he had been a clerk; he was grateful to you for his appointments; his demeanor was quite modest. But since he has perpetrated wrongs without number, he has become mightily supercilious. If a man speaks of Aeschines, the man who was once a clerk, he makes a private quarrel of it, and talks of defamation of character. Behold him pacing the market-place with the stately stride of Pythocles, his long robe reaching to his ankles, his cheeks puffed out, as who should say, One of Philip’s most intimate friends, at your service! He has joined the clique that wants to get rid of democracy,—that regards the established political order as an inconstant wave,—mere midsummer madness. And once he made obeisance to the Rotunda

Now I wish by a brief recapitulation to remind you of the manner in which Philip discomfited your policy with these scoundrels as his confederates. It is well worth while to examine and contemplate the whole imposition. At the outset he was really desirous of peace, for his whole country was overrun by banditti, and his ports were blockaded, so that he got no advantage from all his wealth. Accordingly he sent those envoys who addressed you in his name with so much courtesy—Neoptolemus, Aristodemus, and Ctesiphon.

But as soon as he was visited by us ambassadors, he promptly took Aeschines into his pay, that he might support and co-operate with the infamous Philocrates, and overpower those of us whose intentions were honest. He then composed a letter to you, as the best means of obtaining the peace he desired.

Even then it was still out of his power to achieve any important result to your disadvantage, unless he should destroy the Phocians. That was no easy task, for, as luck would have it, his affairs had reached a crisis of such a nature that either he could not realize any of his purposes, or else he was obliged to commit falsehood and perjury, with the whole world, both Greek and barbarian, to witness his wickedness.

For if he should accept the Phocians as allies, and with your help take the oath of friendship to them, he must at once violate the oaths he had already sworn to the Thessalians and the Thebans, with the latter of whom he had covenanted to help them in the subjugation of Boeotia, and with the former to restore their rights at the Amphictyonic Council. If, on the other hand, he was loth to accept them—and in fact the prospect did not please him—he expected that you would send troops to Thermopylae to stop his passage, as indeed you would have done if you had not been outwitted. In that event, he calculated that he would be unable to get through.

He did not need any information from others to reach that conclusion. He was himself a sufficient witness, for, after his first defeat of the Phocians and the overthrow of their leader and commander Onomarchus, although no one in the whole world, Greek or barbarian, sent aid to them save you alone, so far from getting through Thermopylae, or accomplishing any of the purposes of the passage, he had been unable even to approach the pass.

I take it he was perfectly well aware that now, with Thessaly at variance with him—the Pheraeans, for example, refusing to join his following—with the Thebans getting the worst of the war, defeated in an engagement, and a trophy erected at their expense, he would be unable to force the passage if you sent troops to Thermopylae, and that he could not even make the attempt without serious loss unless he should also resort to some trickery. How, then, he thought, shall I escape open falsehood, and attain all my objects without incurring the charge of perjury? Only if I can find Athenians to hood-wink the Athenian people, for then I shall have no share in the ensuing dishonor.

Accordingly his envoys warned you that he would not accept the Phocian alliance, but then Aeschines and his friends, taking up the tale, assured the people that, although for the sake of the Thebans and the Thessalians Philip could not with decency accept the alliance, yet if he should become master of the situation, and get his peace, he would thereafter do exactly what we should now ask him to agree to.

So on the strength of these expectations and inducements he obtained his peace, with the Phocians excluded; but it was still necessary to stop the reinforcement of Thermopylae, for which fifty war-galleys were lying at anchor to enable you to check Philip’s advance.

How could it be done? What new artifice could he invent for that purpose? Someone must filch your opportunities of action, and surprise you with an unexpected crisis, so that you might lose the power, if not the will, of sending the expedition. That, then, was clearly what these men undertook. As you have often heard, I was unable to get away in time; I had chartered a ship, but was prevented from sailing.

But it was further necessary that the Phocians should acquire confidence in Philip and make a voluntary surrender, so that no delay should intervene, and no unfriendly resolution come to hand from you. Very well, thought Philip, a report shall be made by the Athenian ambassadors that the Phocians are to be protected; and so, though they persist in mistrusting me, they will deliver themselves into my hands through confidence in the Athenians. We will enlist the sympathy of the Athenian people in the hope that, supposing themselves to have got everything they want, they will pass no obstructive resolution. These men shall carry from us such flattering reports and assurances that, whatsoever may befall, they will make no movement.

In this manner and by the aid of this artifice our ruin was accomplished by men themselves doomed to perdition. For at once, instead of witnessing the restoration of Thespiae and Plataea, you heard of the enslavement of Orchomenus and Coronea. Instead of the humiliation of Thebes and the abasement of her pride and insolence, the walls of your own allies the Phocians were demolished, and demolished by those very Thebans whom Aeschines in his speech had sent to live in scattered villages.