On the Embassy (241-245)

If you are wise, that performance of his will now be turned to his disadvantage, not only because it was a powerful indication of his misconduct, but because he employed in his prosecution arguments that are now valid against himself. For surely the principles which you, Aeschines, laid down when you prosecuted Timarchus ought to have equal weight for others against you.

Now on that occasion he observed to the jury: Demosthenes will conduct this man’s defence, and will denounce my conduct of the embassy; and then, if he leads you astray by his speech, he will go about in his conceited way, and boast: How did I do it? What did I say? Why, I led the jury clean away from the question; filched the whole case from them, and came off triumphant. Then do not follow my example: address your defence to the real issue. You had your opportunity of denouncing and saying what you chose when you were the prosecutor.

Moreover, having no witnesses to produce in support of your accusations, you quoted verses to the jury:

Rumor, that many people spread abroad,

Dieth not wholly: Rumor is a god.

That you may understand how far more numerous are your accusers than those of Timarchus, observe this. He was not known even to all his neighbors; but there is not a man in Greece or in foreign parts who does not aver that you ambassadors made gain of your embassy. If rumor is true, the rumor of the multitude is against you; and for the veracity, and even the divinity, of rumor, and for the wisdom of the poet who composed these verses, we have your own assurance.

After these heroics he naturally proceeds to collect and declaim some iambic poetry, for instance:

Whoso delights to walk with wicked men,

Of him I ask not, for I know him such

As are the men whose converse pleases him.