Against Demosthenes (11-15)

Alternatively, if it was your wish to forgive Demosthenes for these offences and to have in the city a large number of people who would take bribes against you, the council ought, having tested your wishes in the previous cases, to have refused to undertake an investigation over the payments of money recently reported. For despite the excellence and the justice of this recent report, which incriminates Demosthenes and the rest of them, and despite the fact that the Areopagus has not deferred to the power of Demosthenes or Demades but has regarded justice and truth as more important,

Demosthenes goes round none the less maligning the council and telling the same stories about himself with which he will probably try to mislead you presently. “I made the Thebans your allies.”[*] No, Demosthenes, you impaired the common interest of both our states. “I brought everyone into line at Chaeronea.” On the contrary you yourself were the only one to leave the line at Chaeronea.[*] “I served on many embassies on your behalf.”

One wonders what he would have done or what he would have said if the course that he had recommended on these missions had proved successful, when, after touring the whole Greek world to negotiate such disasters and mistakes, he still claims to have been granted the greatest privileges, namely those of accepting bribes against his country and saying and doing whatever he wishes against the public interest.

You made no allowance for Timotheus,[*] Athenians, although he sailed round the Peloponnese and defeated the Lacedaemonians in a naval battle at Corcyra, and was the son of Conon[*] too who liberated Greece. Though he captured Samos, Methone, Pydna, Potidaea, and twenty other cities besides, you did not permit such services to outweigh the trial which you were then conducting or the oaths that governed your vote; instead you fined him a hundred talents because Aristophon said that he had accepted money from the Chians and Rhodians.

Will you then absolve this abominable wretch, this Scythian,—really I cannot contain myself,—whom no mere individual but the whole Areopagus has shown, after inquiry, to be in possession of money to your detriment, whose bribery and corruption against the city have been revealed and established beyond doubt? Will you not punish him and make him an example to others? He is known not only to have taken gold from the royal treasuries[*] but also to have enriched himself at the city's own expense, since he did not even withhold his hand from the money lately brought to her by Harpalus.