Chapter 7

{85} Now is any of you aware of any discredit that attached itself to the city owing to this decree? Did any mockery or ridicule ensue, such as Aeschines said must follow on the present occasion, if I were crowned? But surely when proceedings are recent and well known to all, then it is that, if they are satisfactory, they meet with gratitude, and if they are otherwise, with punishment. It appears, then, that on that occasion I met with gratitude, not with blame or punishment.

{86} Thus the fact that, up to the time when these events took place, I acted throughout as was best for the city, has been acknowledged by the victory of my advice and my proposals in your deliberations, by the successful execution of the measures which I proposed, and the award of crowns in consequence of them to the city and to myself and to all, and by your celebration of sacrifices to the gods, and processions, in thankfulness for these blessings.

{87} When Philip had been expelled from Euboea--and while the arms which expelled him were yours, the statesmanship and the decrees (even though some of my opponents may split their sides) were mine--he proceeded to look for some other stronghold from which he could threaten the city. And seeing that we were more dependent than any other people upon imported corn, and wishing to get our corn-trade into his power, he advanced to Thrace. First, he requested the Byzantines, his own allies, to join him in the war against you; and when they refused and said (with truth) that they had not made their alliance with him for such a purpose, he erected a stockade against the city, brought up his engines, and proceeded to besiege it. {88} I will not ask again what you ought to have done when this was happening; it is manifest to all. But who was it that went to the rescue of the Byzantines, and saved them? Who was it that prevented the Hellespont from falling into other hands at that time? It was you, men of Athens--and when I say 'you', I mean this city. And who was it that spoke and moved resolutions and acted for the city, and gave himself up unsparingly to the business of the State? It was I. {89} But of the immense benefit thus conferred upon all, you no longer need words of mine to tell you, since you have had actual experience of it. For the war which then ensued, apart from the glorious reputation that it brought you, kept you supplied with the necessaries of life in greater plenty and at lower prices than the present Peace, which these worthy men are guarding to their country's detriment, in their hopes of something yet to be realized. May those hopes be disappointed! May they share the fortune which you, who wish for the best, ask of the gods, rather than cause you to share that upon which their own choice is fixed! (_To the clerk_.) Read out to the jury the crowns awarded to the city in consequence of her action by the Byzantines and by the Perinthians.

{90, 91} [_The decree of the Byzantines is read_.]

{92} Read out also the crowns awarded by the peoples of the Chersonese.

[_The decree of the peoples of the Chersonese is read_.]

{93} Thus the policy which I had adopted was not only successful in saving the Chersonese and Byzantium, in preventing the Hellespont from falling at that time into the power of Philip, and in bringing honours to the city in consequence, but it revealed to the whole world the noble gallantry of Athens and the baseness of Philip. For all saw that he, the ally of the Byzantines, was besieging them--what could be more shameful or revolting? {94} and on the other hand, it was seen that you, who might fairly have urged many well-founded complaints against them for their inconsiderate conduct[n] towards you at an earlier period, not only refused to remember your grudge and to abandon the victims of aggression, but actually delivered them; and in consequence of this, you won glory and goodwill on all hands. And further, though every one knows that you have crowned many public men before now, no one can name any but myself--that is to say, any public counsellor and orator--for whose merits the city has received a crown.

{95} In order to prove to you, also, that the slanders which he uttered against the Euboeans and Byzantines, as he recalled to you any ill-natured action that they had taken towards you in the past, are disingenuous calumnies, not only because they are false (for this, I think, you may all be assumed to know), but also because, however true they might be, it was still to your advantage to deal with the political situation as I have done, I desire to describe, and that briefly, one or two of the noble deeds which this city has done in your own time. For an individual and a State should strive always, in their respective spheres, to fashion their future conduct after the highest examples that their past affords. {96} Thus, men of Athens, at a time when the Spartans were masters of land and sea,[n] and were retaining their hold, by means of governors and garrisons, upon the country all round Attica--Euboea, Tanagra, all Boeotia, Megara, Aegina, Ceos, and the other islands--and when Athens possessed neither ships nor walls, you marched forth to Haliartus, and again, not many days later, to Corinth, though the Athenians of that day might have borne a heavy grudge against both the Corinthians and the Thebans for the part they had played in reference to the Deceleian War.[n] {97} But they bore no such grudge. Far from it! And neither of these actions, Aeschines, was taken by them to help benefactors; nor was the prospect before them free from danger. Yet they did not on that account sacrifice those who fled to them for help. For the sake of glory and honour they were willing to expose themselves to the danger; and it was a right and a noble spirit that inspired their counsels. For the life of all men must end in death, though a man shut himself in a chamber and keep watch; but brave men must ever set themselves to do that which is noble, with their joyful hope for their buckler, and whatsoever God gives, must bear it gallantly. {98} Thus did your forefathers, and thus did the elder among yourselves: for, although the Spartans were no friends or benefactors of yours, but had done much grievous wrong to the city, yet, when the Thebans, after their victory at Leuctra, attempted to annihilate them, you prevented it, not terrified by the strength or the reputation which the Thebans then enjoyed, nor reckoning up what the men had done to you, for whom you were to face this peril. {99} And thus, as you know, you revealed to all the Hellenes, that whatever offences may be committed against you, though under all other circumstances you show your resentment of them, yet if any danger to life or freedom overtakes the transgressors, you will bear no grudge and make no reckoning. Nor was it in these instances only that you were thus disposed. For once more, when the Thebans were appropriating Euboea,[n] you did not look on while it was done; you did not call to mind the wrong which had been done to you in the matter of Oropus[n] by Themison and Theodorus: you helped even these; and it was then that the city for the first time had voluntary trierarchs, of whom I was one.[n] But I will not speak of this yet. {100} And although to save the island was itself a noble thing to do, it was a yet nobler thing by far, that when their lives and their cities were absolutely in your power, you gave them back, as it was right to do, to the very men who had offended against you, and made no reckoning, when such trust had been placed in you, of the wrongs which you had suffered. I pass by the innumerable instances which I might still give--battles at sea, expeditions [by land, campaigns] both long ago and now in our day; in all of which the object of the city has been to defend the freedom and safety of the other Hellenic peoples. {101} And so, when in all these striking examples I had beheld the city ever ready to strive in defence of the interests of others, what was I likely to bid her do, what action was I likely to recommend to her, when the debate to some extent concerned her own interests? 'Why,' you would say, 'to remember her grudge against those who wanted deliverance, and to look for excuses for sacrificing everything!' And who would not have been justified in putting me to death, if I had attempted to bring shame upon the city's high traditions, though it were only by word? The deed itself you would never have done, I know full well; for had you desired to do it, what was there to hinder you? Were you not free so to act? Had you not these men here to propose it?

{102} I wish now to return to the next in succession of my political acts; and here again you must ask yourselves, what was the best thing for the city? For, men of Athens, when I saw that your navy was breaking up, and that, while the rich were obtaining exemption on the strength of small payments,[n] citizens of moderate or small means were losing all that they had; and further, that in consequence of these things the city was always missing her opportunities; I enacted a law in accordance with which I compelled the former--the rich--to do their duty fairly; I put an end to the injustice done to the poor, and (what was the greatest service of all to the State) I caused our preparations to be made in time. {103} When I was indicted for this, I appeared before you at the ensuing trial, and was acquitted; the prosecutor failed to obtain the necessary fraction of the votes. But what sums do you think the leaders of the Taxation-Boards, or those who stood second or third, offered me, to induce me, if possible, not to enact the law, or at least to let it drop and lie under sworn notice of prosecution?[n] They offered sums so large, men of Athens, that I should hesitate to mention them to you. It was a natural course for them to take. {104} For under the former laws it was possible for them to divide their obligation between sixteen persons, paying little or nothing themselves, and grinding down their poorer fellow citizens: while by my law each must pay down a sum calculated in proportion to his property; and a man came to be charged with two warships, who had previously been one of sixteen subscribers to a single one (for they used now to call themselves no longer captains of their ships, but subscribers). Thus there was nothing that they were not willing to give, if only the new plan could be brought to nothing, and they could escape being compelled to do their duty fairly. (_To the clerk_.) {105} Now read me, first, the decree[n] in accordance with which I had to meet the indictment; and then the lists of those liable under the former law, and under my own, respectively. Read.

[_The decree is read_.]

{106} Now produce that noble list.

[_A list is read_.]

Now produce, for comparison with this, the list under my own law.

[_A list is read_.]

Was this, think you, but a trifling assistance which I rendered to the poor among you? {107} Would the wealthy have spent but a trifling sum to avoid doing their duty fairly? I am proud not only of having refused all compromise upon the measure, not only of having been acquitted when I was indicted, but also of having enacted a law which was beneficial, and of having given proof of it in practice. For throughout the war the armaments were equipped under my law, and no trierarch ever laid the suppliants' branch[n] before you in token of grievance, nor took sanctuary at Munychia; none was imprisoned by the Admiralty Board; no warship was abandoned at sea and lost to the State, or left behind here as unseaworthy. Under the former laws all these things used to happen; {108} and the reason was that the obligation rested upon the poor, and in consequence there were many cases of inability to discharge it. I transferred the duties of the trierarchy from the poor to the rich; and therefore every duty was properly fulfilled. Aye, and for this very reason I deserve to receive praise--that I always adopted such political measures as brought with them accessions of glory and honour and power to the city. No measure of mine is malicious, harsh, or unprincipled; none is degrading or unworthy of the city. The same spirit will be seen both in my domestic and my international policy. {109} For just as in home affairs I did not set the favour of the rich above the rights of the many, so in international affairs I did not embrace the gifts and the friendship of Philip, in preference to the common interests of all the Hellenes.

It still remains for me, I suppose, to speak about the proclamation, and about my examination. {110} The statement that I acted for the best, and that I am loyal to you throughout and eager to do you good service, I have proved, I think, sufficiently, by what I have said. At the same time I am passing over the most important parts of my political life and actions; for I conceive that I ought first to render to you in their proper order my arguments in regard to the alleged illegality itself: which done, even if I say nothing about the rest of my political acts, I can still rely upon that personal knowledge of them which each of you possesses.

{111} Of the arguments which the prosecutor jumbled together in utter confusion with reference to the laws accompanying his indictment,[n] I am quite certain that you could not follow the greater part, nor could I understand them myself; but I will simply address you straightforwardly upon the question of right. So far am I from claiming (as he just now slanderously declared) to be free from the liability to render an account, that I admit a life-long liability to account for every part of my administration and policy. {112} But I do not admit that I am liable for one single day--you hear me, Aeschines?--to account for what I have given to the People as a free-will offering out of my private estate; nor is any one else so liable, not even if he is one of the nine archons. What law is so replete with injustice and churlishness, that when a man has made a present out of his private property and done an act of generosity and munificence, it deprives him of the gratitude due to him, hales him before a court of disingenuous critics, and sets them to audit accounts of sums which he himself has given? There is no such law. If the prosecutor asserts that there is, let him produce it, and I will resign myself and say no more. {113} But the law does not exist, men of Athens; this is nothing but an informer's trick on the part of Aeschines, who, because I was Controller of the Festival Fund when I made this donation, says, 'Ctesiphon proposed a vote of thanks to him when he was still liable to account.' The vote of thanks was not for any of the things for which I was liable to account; it was for my voluntary gift, and your charge is a misrepresentation. 'Yes,' you say, 'but you were also a Commissioner of Fortifications.' I was, and thanks were rightly accorded me on the very ground that, instead of charging the sums which I spent, I made a present of them. A statement of account, it is true, calls for an audit and scrutineers; but a free gift deserves gratitude and thanks; and that is why the defendant proposed this motion in my favour. {114} That this principle is not merely laid down in the laws, but rooted in your national character, I shall have no difficulty in proving by many instances. Nausicles,[n] to begin with, has often been crowned by you, while general, for sacrifices which he had made from his private funds. Again, when Diotimus[n] gave the shields, and Charidemus[n] afterwards, they were crowned. And again, Neoptolemus here, while still director of many public works, has received honours for his voluntary gifts. It would really be too bad, if any one who held any office must either be debarred thereby from making a present to the State, or else, instead of receiving due gratitude, must submit accounts of the sums given. {115} To prove the truth of my statements, (_to the clerk_) take and read the actual decrees which were passed in honour of these persons. Read.

{116} [_Two decrees are read_.]

{117} Each of these persons, Aeschines, was accountable as regards the office which he held, but not as regards the services for which he was crowned. Nor am I, therefore; for I presume that I have the same rights as others with reference to the same matters. I made a voluntary gift. For this I receive thanks; for I am not liable to account for what I gave. I was holding office. True, and I have rendered an account of my official expenditure, but not of what I gave voluntarily. Ah! but I exercised my office iniquitously! What? and you were there, when the auditors brought me before them, and did not accuse me?

{118} Now that the court may see that the prosecutor himself bears me witness that I was crowned for services of which I was not liable to render an account, (_to the clerk_) take and read the decree which was proposed in my honour, in its entirety. (_To the jury_.) The points which he has omitted to indict in the Council's resolution will show that the charges which he does make are deliberate misrepresentations. (_To the clerk_.) Read.

[_The decree is read_.]

{119} My donations then, were these, of which you have not made one the subject of indictment. It is the reward for these, which the Council states to be my due, that you attack. You admit that it was legal to accept the gifts offered, and you indict as illegal the return of gratitude for them. In Heaven's name, what must the perfect scoundrel, the really heaven-detested, malignant being be like? Must he not be a man like this?

{120} But as regards the proclamation in the theatre, I pass by the fact that ten thousand persons have been thus proclaimed on ten thousand different occasions, and that my own name has often been so proclaimed before. But, in Heaven's name, Aeschines, are you so perverse and stupid, that you cannot grasp the fact that the recipient of the crown feels the same pride wherever the crown is proclaimed, and that it is for the benefit of those who confer it that the proclamation is made in the theatre? For those who hear are stimulated to do good service to the State, and commend those who return gratitude for such service even more than they commend the recipient of the crown. That is why the city has enacted this law. (_To the clerk_.) Take the law itself and read it.

[_The law is read_.]

{121} Do you hear, Aeschines, the plain words of the law? 'Except such as the People or the Council shall resolve so to proclaim. But let these be proclaimed.' Why, wretched man, do you lay this dishonest charge? Why do you invent false arguments? Why do you not take hellebore[n] to cure you? What? Are you not ashamed to bring a case founded upon envy, not upon any crime--to alter some of the laws, and to leave out parts of others, when they ought surely, in justice, to be read entire to those who have sworn to give their votes in accordance with the laws? {122} And then, while you act in this way, you enumerate the qualities which should be found in a friend of the People, as if you had contracted for a statue, and discovered on receiving it that it had not the features required by the contract; or as if a friend of the People was known by a definition, and not by his works and his political measures! And you shout out expressions, proper and improper, like a reveller on a cart[n]--expressions which apply to you and your house, not to me. I will add this also, men of Athens. {123} The difference between abuse and accusation is, I imagine, that an accusation is founded upon crimes, for which the penalties are assigned by law; abuse, upon such slanders as their own character leads enemies to utter about one another. And I conceive that our forefathers built these courts of law, not that we might assemble you here and revile one another with improper expressions suggested by our adversary's private life, but that we might convict any one who happens to have committed some crime against the State. {124} Aeschines knew this as well as I; and yet he chose to make a ribald attack instead of an accusation. At the same time, it is not fair that he should go off without getting as much as he gives, even in this respect; and when I have asked him one question, I will at once proceed to the attack. Are we to call you, Aeschines, the enemy of the State, or of myself? Of myself, of course. What? And when you might have exacted the penalty from me, on behalf of your fellow countrymen, according to the laws--at public examinations, by indictment, by all other forms of trial--did you always omit to do so? {125} And yet to-day, when I am unassailable upon every ground--on the ground of law, of lapse of time, of the statutable limit,[n] of the many previous trials which I have undergone upon every charge, without having once been convicted of any crime against you to this day--and when the city must necessarily share to a greater or smaller degree in the glory of acts which were really acts of the people, have you confronted me upon such an issue as this? Take care lest, while you profess to be _my_ enemy, you prove to be the enemy of your fellow countrymen!

{126} Since then I have shown you all what is the vote which religion and justice demand of you, I am now obliged, it would seem, by the slanders which he has uttered (though I am no lover of abuse) to reply to his many falsehoods by saying just what is absolutely necessary about himself, and showing who he is, and whence he is sprung, that he so lightly begins to use bad language, pulling to pieces certain expressions of mine, when he has himself used expressions which any respectable man would have shrunk from uttering; {127} for if the accuser were Aeacus or Rhadamanthus or Minos,[n] instead of a scandal-monger,[n] an old hand in the marketplace,[n] a pestilent clerk, I do not believe that he would have spoken thus, or produced such a stock of ponderous phrases, crying aloud, as if he were acting a tragedy, 'O Earth and Sun and Virtue,'[n] and the like; or again, invoking 'Wit and Culture, by which things noble and base are discerned apart'--for, of course, you heard him speaking in this way. {128} Scum of the earth! What have you or yours to do with virtue? How should _you_ discern what is noble and what is not? Where and how did you get your qualification to do so? What right have _you_ to mention culture anywhere? A man of genuine culture would not only never have asserted such a thing of himself, but would have blushed to hear another do so: and those who, like you, fall far short of it, but are tactless enough to claim it, succeed only in causing distress to their hearers, when they speak--not in seeming to be what they profess.