On the Embassy (206-210)

Whom would you call the most detestable person in all Athens, and the most swollen with impudence and superciliousness? No one, I am sure, would name, even by a slip of the tongue, anyone but Philocrates. Who is the most vehement speaker, the man who can express himself most emphatically with the aid of his big voice? Undoubtedly Aeschines. Whom do these men call timid and faint-hearted, or, as I should say, diffident, in addressing a crowd? Me; for I never worried you; I have never tried to dragoon you against your inclinations.

Well, at every Assembly, whenever there is any discussion of this business, you hear me denouncing and incriminating these men, and declaring roundly that they have taken bribes and made traffic of all the interests of the commonwealth; and no one of them ever contradicts me, or opens his mouth, or lets himself be seen.

How comes it then that the most impudent men in Athens, and the loudest speakers, are overborne by me, the nervous man, who can speak no louder than another? Because truth is strong, and consciousness of corruption weak. Conscience paralyses their audacity; conscience cripples their tongues, closes their lips, stifles them, puts them to silence.

You remember the most recent occasion, at Peiraeus only the other day, when you refused to appoint Aeschines to an embassy, how he bellowed at me: I will impeach you,—I will indict you,—aha! aha![*] And yet a threat of impeachment involves endless speeches and litigation; but here are just two or three simple words that a slave bought yesterday could deliver: Men of Athens, here is a strange thing! This man accuses me of offences in which he himself took part. He says that I have taken bribes, when he took them, or shared them, himself.

He never spoke, he never uttered a word of that speech; none of you heard it; he only vented idle menaces. The reason is that he was conscious of guilt; he cowered like a slave before those words; his thoughts did not approach them but recoiled from them, arrested by his evil conscience. Mere vague invective and abuse there was no one to stop.