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.”In making this claim Demosthenes was referring to events just before the battle of Chaeronea when he won Thebes over to Athens by offering her more liberal terms than Philip. For his defence of this policy see Dem. 18.153 sq. 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.The charge of cowardice in battle is often brought against Demosthenes by Aeschines (e.g. Aeschin. 3.175); it is mentioned by Plutarch (Plut. Dem. 855 A) and in the (Plut. Vit. 845 F). “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,The following passage is repeated almost word for word in the speech against Philocles (Din. 3.17). Timotheus, an Athenian general and a friend of Isocrates, who recounts his exploits (Isoc. 15.107-113), sailed round the Peloponnese and gained a victory at Corcyra in 375 B.C. In 365 he took Samos, which was occupied by a Persian garrison, after a ten months' siege (Dem. 15.9). Thence he moved to Thrace and mastered several Chalcidian cities, of which Dinarchus here mentions three. In 356 he was sent out with two others to reinforce the fleet of Chares who was trying to crush an allied revolt; but in a sea battle near Chios he failed to help Chares, owing to stormy weather, and was therefore prosecuted by him for bribery. Timotheus was not popular owing to his haughty behavior; and being fined the unprecedented amount of a hundred talents, which he could not pay, he went into exile in Chalcis. Cf. Isoc. 15.131. Athenians, although he sailed round the Peloponnese and defeated the Lacedaemonians in a naval battle at Corcyra, and was the son of CononConon, a general in the Peloponnesian war who fought at Aegospotami, was later joint commander of the Persian fleet. In this capacity he rendered a service to Athens by defeating the Spartan Pisander in a naval battle off Cnidus in 394 B.C. 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 treasuriesSee note on Din. 1.10 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.