Against Demosthenes (21-25)

But this hard-hearted and impious miser could not bring himself to expend, from his great resources, ten paltry talents, though he saw such high hopes dawning for the salvation of Thebes. Instead, as Stratocles said, he allowed others to provide this sum to induce those of the Arcadians who had marched out to return home and deny their help to Thebes.

Do you consider that the evils for which Demosthenes and his avarice have been responsible are trivial or of little import for the whole of Greece? Do you think that he deserves any pity at your hands after committing such offences? Should he not rather suffer the extreme penalty to atone for his crimes, both past and present? The verdict given by you today, Athenians, will be heard by all mankind, who will observe how you, the judges, treat the man with such a record.

You are the people who, for crimes far smaller than those Demosthenes has committed, have inflicted on men severe and irrevocable penalties. It was you who killed Menon the miller, because he kept a free boy from Pellene in his mill. You punished with death Themistius of Aphidna, because he assaulted the Rhodian lyre-player at the Eleusinian festival, and Euthymachus, because he put the Olynthian girl in a brothel.

But through this traitor children and women, the wives of the Thebans, were distributed among the tents of the barbarians, a neighboring and allied city has been torn up from the midst of Greece and the site of Thebes is being ploughed and sown, the city of men who shared with you the war against Philip. Yes, it is being ploughed and sown. And this unfeeling wretch showed no compassion for a city thus lamentably destroyed, though he visited it as an envoy representing you and has often shared the meat and drink of its citizens, claiming himself that he made it our ally. But those to whom he often resorted in their prosperity he has betrayed in their misfortune.

The Thebans, so our elders tell us, when the democracy in our city had been overthrown and Thrasybulus was assembling the exiles in Thebes ready for the seizure of Phyle,[*] although the Spartans were strong and forbade them to admit or let out any Athenian, helped the democrats to return and passed that decree which has so often been read before you, stating that they would turn a blind eye if any Athenian marched through their territory bearing arms.