On the False Embassy

To give you the clearest proof that that destruction was effected in this way by the contrivance of these men, I will submit a reckoning of the dates of the several transactions. If any of the defendants challenges my calculation, let him stand up and speak in the time[*](in the time, etc.: see Dem. 18.139.) allotted to me. Now the treaty was made on the nineteenth of Elaphebolion, and we were abroad receiving the oaths for three entire months. During the whole of that time the Phocians were safe.

We returned from the oath-taking embassy on the thirteenth of Scirophorion, when Philip was already at Thermopylae and making promises to the Phocians which they were not disposed to believe. The proof of that is that otherwise they would not have resorted to you. Then the Assembly, at which these men brought the whole business to ruin with their lies and cajolery, was held on the sixteenth of Scirophorion.

Now I calculate that the news from Athens reached the Phocians on the fourth day after that date, for there were Phocian envoys in the city, and they were interested in knowing what report these men would submit and what decree you would adopt. Therefore the twentieth was the day on which we reckon that the Phocians received the news, that is, the fourth day after the sixteenth. Then followed the twenty-first, twenty-second, twenty-third; and on the twenty-third the convention was made, and the fortunes of Phocis perished and came to an end.

How, then, is this date proved? On the twenty-seventh, when you were holding an assembly at Peiraeus to discuss dockyard business, Dercylus arrived from Chalcis with the intelligence that Philip had put the whole affair into the hands of the Thebans, and he computed that it was then the fourth day after the convention. Twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven: that makes it the fourth day. Therefore these dates, together with their own reports and decrees, all convict these men of having co-operated with Philip, and they share with him the guilt of the destruction of the Phocians.

Again, the consideration that not a city of the Phocians was taken forcibly, whether by blockade or assault, and yet that they were all brought to utter ruin under the convention, is a convincing proof that they perished because they had been persuaded through these men that Philip would deliver them; for about his character they had no illusions. Now give me our treaty with the Phocians, and the Amphictyonic decrees, under which they dismantled their defences. These documents will show you on what footing you stood with them, and what treatment they have received by the fault of these wicked men. Read.

(The Treaty of Friendship between the Athenians and the Phocians is read)

These are the relations that subsisted between you and them—friendship, alliance, succor. Now hear what they have suffered through the man who thwarted the succor you owed them. Read.

(The Convention between Philip and the Phocians is read)

You hear it, men of Athens. A convention between Philip and the Phocians, it says, not between the Thebans and the Phocians, or the Thessalians and the Phocians, or the Locrians, or any other of the nationalities then present. Again, it says that the Phocians are to surrender their cities to Philip, not to the Thebans, or the Thessalians, or any other people.

Why? Because you had been assured by Aeschines that Philip had come to deliver the Phocians. In Aeschines they had confidence; to Aeschines they looked for aid; with Aeschines they were making their peace. Read the other documents. Now you shall see to what sufferings they were brought by that confidence. Does the story agree with, does it in any way resemble, those reports of Aeschines? Read.

(The Decrees of the Amphictyonic Council are read)

Men of Athens, nothing more awful or more momentous has befallen in Greece within living memory, nor, as I believe, in all the history of the past. Yet through the agency of these men all these great and terrible transactions have been dominated by a single individual, though the city of Athens is still in being, the city whose ancestral prerogative it was to stand forth as the champion of the Hellenic race, and declare that such things shall not be. In what fashion these unhappy Phocians have perished you may learn, not from the decrees alone,

but from the deeds that have been wrought—a spectacle, men of Athens, to move us to terror and pity indeed! Not long ago, when we were travelling to Delphi, necessity compelled us to look upon that scene—homesteads levelled with the ground, cities stripped of their defensive walls, a countryside all emptied of its young men; only women, a few little children, and old men stricken with misery. No man could find words adequate to the woes that exist in that country today. And yet these are the people—you take the words out of my mouth—these are the people who in the day of our trial[*](in the day of our trial: 404 B.C. when, after the naval defeat at Aegispotami, and the surrender of the city to Lysander, Athens lay at the mercy of Thebes, Sparta, and Corinth. Grote, ch. 65.) openly cast their vote against the Thebans, when the question was the enslavement of us all!

Then what vote, what judgement, men of Athens, do you think that our forefathers would give, if they could recover consciousness, at the trial of the men who devised the destruction of the Phocians? I conceive that they would account even those who should stone them to death with their own hands to be free of all bloodguiltiness. For is it not an ignominy—or use a stronger word if such there be—that, by the fault of these men, the people who saved us at that crisis, and gave for us the verdict of deliverance, have received evil in requital of good, and have been abandoned to the endurance of afflictions such as no people of the Greeks has ever known? And who is the author of those wrongs? Who is the contriver of that deception? Who but Aeschines?

Men of Athens, Philip has many claims to congratulation on his good fortune, but beyond them all he might well be especially congratulated for one thing, in which I solemnly declare that I can name no man of our time who has been equally fortunate. Such achievements as the capture of great cities and the subjugation of a vast territory are, I suppose, enviable, as they are undoubtedly imposing; yet we could mention many other men who have done the like.

But the stroke of good fortune I have in mind is peculiar to him and has befallen no other man. What is it? It is that, when he needed scoundrels for his purposes, he found bigger scoundrels than he wanted. For surely that is a fair description of the men who deceived you, hiring themselves out for lies which Philip, in spite of the great interests at issue, did not dare to tell on his own account, which he never wrote in any letter or put into the mouth of ambassadors of his own.

Antipater and Parmenio, though they were in the service of a hard taskmaster, and though they were not likely to fall in with you again, nevertheless claimed exemption from serving as the agents of your beguilement; and yet citizens of Athens, the appointed envoys of the freest of all cities, men who must needs encounter you and look you in the face, who must live with you all the rest of their life, who would have to render you a strict account of their actions, accepted a commission to beguile you! Could any men be more wicked or more lost to all sense of shame?

To show you that this man is already accursed by you, and that religion and piety forbid you to acquit one who has been guilty of such falsehoods,—recite the curse.[*](Every meeting of the Assembly and of the Council opened with a form of prayer, which included a curse on the enemies of the state and was recited by the marshal (κῆρυξ) at the dictation of an under-clerk. The curse has nowhere been preserved, but a parody will be found in Aristoph. Thes. 331 ff.) Take and read it from the statute: here it is.

(The Statutory Commination is read)

This imprecation, men of Athens, is pronounced, as the law directs, by the marshal on your behalf at every meeting of the Assembly, and again before the Council at all their sessions. The defendant cannot say that he is not familiar with it, for, when acting as clerk to the Assembly and as an officer of the Council, he used to dictate the statute to the marshal.