Against Ctesiphon (91-95)

With this plan in view Callias sent ambassadors hither,[*] Glaucetes, Empedon, and Diodorus the long distance runner, who brought to the people empty hopes, but silver to Demosthenes and his following. And he was buying three things at once: first, to be assured of your alliance, for he had no alternative if the people, remembering his past crimes, should refuse the alliance, since one of two things was sure, that he would be banished from Chalcis, or be caught and put to death—such were the forces that were moving against him, the combined power of Philip and the Thebans; and the second service for which the pay came to the man who was to move the alliance, was to provide that the Chalcidians should not sit in the synod at Athens;[*] and the third was that they should pay no contributions to the league. Now in not one of these plans did Callias fail;

and Demosthenes, the tyrant-hater, as he pretends to be, who, Ctesiphon says, speaks what is best,[*] bartered away the opportunities of the city, and in his motion for the alliance provided that we were to aid the Chalcidians, stipulating in return for this a mere phrase; for he added, to make it sound well, The Chalcidians on their part are to bring aid if any one shall come against Athens;

but the membership in the synod and the contributions of money, the sources of strength for the coming war, he sold completely, in fairest words proposing most shameful deeds, and leading you on by his talk, telling how our city must first furnish aid to any Greeks who might need it from time to time, but provide for their alliance afterward, after giving them aid. But that you may be sure that I am speaking the truth, please take the motion for the alliance proposed for the benefit of Callias. Read the resolution.

Resolution

But this was only the beginning of outrage—this actual selling of such opportunities and accessions to the league and contributions of money for that which I am about to relate was far worse, as you shall see. For Callias was led on to such a pitch of insolence and arrogance, and Demosthenes—whom Ctesiphon praises—to such a pitch of rapacity for bribes, that, while you still had life and sight and senses, they succeeded in stealing away from you the contributions of Oreus and Eretria, ten talents in all, and they detached from you the delegates from those cities, and carried them back to Chalcis, uniting them in the so-called Euboean Congress. But how they did it and by what crimes, it is high time for you to hear.

Callias, depending no longer on messengers, came himself to you,[*] and coming forward in your assembly repeated a speech that Demosthenes had prepared for him. He said that he had just come from the Peloponnesus, and that he had made arrangements for contributions which would yield a revenue of not less than one hundred talents for use against Philip; and he counted off what each state was to pay: the united Achaeans and the Megarians sixty talents, and the united cities in Euboea, forty.