On the Embassy (56-60)

Never would you have consented to add to the treaty by afterthought the words and to his posterity, but for your confidence in the promises alleged by Aeschines. In those promises the Phocians confided,—and perished! They surrendered themselves to Philip; of their own accord they put their cities at his mercy; and their treatment has exactly contradicted all the assurances of Aeschines.

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[*] 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.