Letters

All the considerations which I have mentioned above, however, I consider of less importance than my conduct from first to last and every day in public life, in which I showed myself in action to be a statesman, never encouraging any nursing of a grudge or a feud or the grasping for unfair advantage, whether shared or for myself, never preferring false charges against either citizen or alien, never being over-clever to work in secret against your interests but always working for them, if occasion should arise, and above board, subject to public approval.

The older men would know—and in all fairness you ought to inform the younger ones—of the hearing granted Python[*](Python, pupil of Isocrates and a presumptuous orator headed a deputation of all the Allies of Philip when they come to Athens in 343 B.C. to accuse the people of unjust conduct. See Dem. 7.20-23, Dem. 18.136, Plut. Dem. 9, and Lucian Encomium 32.) of Byzantium before the Assembly when he arrived with the envoys from the Greeks, expecting to show that the city was acting unjustly, but went away with the tables turned against him after I, alone of those who spoke on that occasion, had brought out the rights of the matter in your defence. I forbear to mention all the embassies upon which I served in support of your interests, in which you were never worsted even in a single instance;

for I shaped my policy, men of Athens, not with an eye to helping you get the better of one another, nor whetting the State against itself, but furthering measures from which I thought a reputation for magnanimity would redound to you. With such aspirations you should all be delighted, and especially the younger men, not looking for someone who will always play the lackey to win your favour in his public conduct—for of this type there will never be a dearth—but for one who, actuated by loyalty, will even rebuke you for your errors of judgement.

Now I pass over many other considerations, on the strength of which a different kind of a man and with no other service to his credit would justly demand to obtain acquittal; I mean the equipping of choruses and triremes and the contributing of money on all occasions.[*](Prosperous citizens of Athens were required from time to time to contribute money for the equipment of triremes, dramatic choruses, and religious deputations to various shrines. These were the λῃτουργίαιin contrast to the ὑπηρεσίαιmentioned in Dem. Ex. 52.) In these duties I shall be found, not only to have been the first to do my own part, but also to have urged the rest to do theirs. Reviewing these services one by one, men of Athens, consider how undeserved is the calamity that has now befallen me.

Since my present troubles are so abundant I am at a loss to know what I shall bemoan first. Will it be my advanced age,[*](His age was sixty. Cicero was only a year older when he wrote his essay Cic. On Old Age.) at which, for the first time and contrary to my deserts, I am compelled to experience the hazards of a perilous exile? Or will it be the disgrace of having been convicted and ruined without any investigation or proof of guilt? Or will it be in disappointment of my hopes in place of which I have fallen heir to evils that rightfully belonged to others,

since neither because of my previous political record was I deserving punishment nor had the charges been proved upon which I was being tried. For I shall never be shown to have been one of the friends of Harpalus,[*](Harpalus was an absconding treasurer of Alexander who sought refuge in Attica. Part of his illicit funds disappeared from the Acropolis, where they had been sequestered by the Athenians. Demosthenes was accused and convicted of accepting twenty talents. Few historians believe that he was guilty; some suggest that he may have spent part of the money in the cause of liberty.) and among the decrees that were passed concerning him only those proposed by me have afforded the State a clean record. From all these facts it is clear that I was caught in an unfortunate conjuncture, not taken in wrongdoing, and that through coming first on the list into court I unjustly fell foul of the public rage against all those involved in those charges.