It was a noble decree, Athenians, a noble decree of your ancestors on this question, providing for a pillar on the Acropolis at the time when Arthmius, son of Pithonax, the Zelite, is said to have brought the gold from the Persians to corrupt the Greeks.Demosthenes (Dem. 9.42 and Dem. 19.271) refers to this pillar. Arthmius of Zelea was an Athenian proxenus. He was sent by Artaxerxes to the Peloponnesus, probably in 461, to stir up war against the Athenians, who had been assisting a revolt in Egypt. (Cf. Thuc. 1.109; Dio. Sic. 11.74. 5; Aeschin. 3.258.) For before anyone had accepted it or given proof of his character they sentenced the man who had brought the gold to exile and banished him completely from the country. This decision, as I said, they engraved on a bronze pillar and set up on the Acropolis as a lesson for you their descendants; for they believed that the man who accepted money in any way at all had in mind the interests of the donors rather than those of the city.