On the Crown (256-260)

If, Aeschines, you are determined at all costs to investigate my fortune, compare it with your own; and, should you find mine to be better than yours, stop your vilification. Begin your inquiry then at the beginning. And I beg earnestly that no one will blame me for want of generosity. No sensible man, in my judgement, ever turns poverty into a reproach, or prides himself on having been nurtured in affluence. But I am compelled by this troublesome man’s scurrility and backbiting to deal with these topics; and I will treat them with as much modesty as the state of the case permits.

In my boyhood, Aeschines, I had the advantage of attending respectable schools: and my means were sufficient for one who was not to be driven by poverty into disreputable occupations. When I had come of age, my circumstances were in accordance with my upbringing. I was in a position to provide a chorus, to pay for a war-galley, and to be assessed to property-tax. I renounced no honor able ambition either in public or in private life: and rendered good service both to the commonwealth and to my own friends. When I decided to take part in public affairs, the political services I chose were such that I was repeatedly decorated both by my own country and by many other Grecian cities and even my enemies, such as you, never ventured to say that my choice was other than honor able.

Such has been my fortune throughout my career. I could tell you more, but I forbear, fearing to weary you with details in which I take some pride.

But do you—you who are so proud and so contemptuous of others— compare your fortune with mine. In your childhood you were reared in abject poverty. You helped your father in the drudgery of a grammar-school, grinding the ink, sponging the benches, and sweeping the school-room, holding the position of a menial, not of a free-born boy.

On arriving at manhood you assisted your mother in her initiations,[*] reading the service-book while she performed the ritual, and helping generally with the paraphernalia. At night it was your duty to mix the libations, to clothe the catechumens in fawn-skins, to wash their bodies, to scour them with the loam and the bran, and, when their lustration was duly performed, to set them on their legs, and give out the hymn:

Here I leave my sins behind,

Here the better way I find;

In day-time you marshalled your gallant throng of bacchanals through the public streets, their heads garlanded with fennel and white poplar; and, as you went, you squeezed the fat-cheeked snakes, or brandished them above your head, now shouting your Euoi Saboi! now footing it to the measure of Hyes Attes! Attes Hyes!—saluted by all the old women with such proud titles as Master of the Ceremonies, Fugleman, Ivy-bearer, Fan-carrier; and at last receiving your recompense of tipsy-cakes, and cracknels, and currant-buns. With such rewards who would not rejoice greatly, and account himself the favorite of fortune?