ÆSCHINES Owes the perpetuity of his fame to the fact that he was the only rival of Demosthenes. He was five years older than that great orator, being born in 389 B.C. In early life he served as a soldier, then as a public clerk, and afterwards undertook the role of an actor. Though not successful on the stage, he acquired modification and inflection of the voice, a clear enunciation, and a certain ease, as well as boldness and impetuosity of manner. At first he was wholly opposed to the policy of Philip of Macedon, and he endeavored to organize the Greek States against that monarch. When his efforts failed, however, he advocated peace, and offered such vehement opposition to the party of Demosthenes as to give rise to the suspicion that he was bribed by Philip. The general belief in his venality rests chiefly on the unsupported evidence of his rival. The increasing opposition and hatred of these orators came to a climax in the prosecution instituted by Eschines against Ctesiphon. As a member of the Council of Five Hundred, Ctesiphon had proposed a decree that Demosthenes, for his public acts, should be presented by the Athenians with a golden crown, and that the presentation should take place in the theatre at the Dionysian festival. Owing to the Macedonian success the decree was not enacted, but six or seven years later Æschines brought a charge against Ctesiphon of proposing what was unconstitutional. As prosecutor, he had the right of first speech, and presented the legal points of his case with consummate ability, and, had he relied solely on these points, the verdict might have been different. But he launched out into a slanderous attack upon the char

acter of his rival, thus affording him an opportunity of refuting the accusations. The trial was in reality a final combat between the representative of Greek independence and the advocate of Macedonian interference. Crowds from the remotest corners of Hellas thronged the platform. Æschines enlivened the assembly by several magnificent bursts of eloquent sarcasm. Demosthenes paid him back in his own coin; but throughout his discourse maintained a more even tenor, increasing in force as he proceeded. The critic Longinus says of him: "One might as soon face with steady eyes a descending thunderbolt as oppose a calm front to the storm of passions which Demosthenes can arouse." The Athenians returned a verdict for the defendant. Eschines, having failed to receive the quota of votes necessary to save him from fine and imprisonment, went as a voluntary exile to Rhodes, where he established a school of rhetoric. Among the first of his rhetorical recitations to his pupils was his own Speech on the Crown. This was well received, but that of Demosthenes, which was next read, elicited greater applause, upon which Æschines remarked with great candor, "What then would you have said if you had heard the beast himself?"

HIS ATTACK ON DEMOSTHENES.

It remains that I produce some instances of his abandoned flattery. For one whole year did Demosthenes enjoy the honor of a senator; and yet in all that time it never appears that he moved to grant precedency to any ministers: for the first, the only time, he conferred this distinction on the ministers of Philip: he servilely attended to accommodate them with his cushions and his carpets: at the dawn of day he conducted them to the theatre; and by his indecent and abandoned adulation raised a universal uproar of derision. When they were on their departure towards Thebes he hired three teams of mules, and conducted them in state into that city. Thus did he expose his country to ridicule. But, that I may confine myself to facts, read the decree relative to the grant of precedency. [The decree is read.]

And yet this abject, this enormous flatterer, when he had been the first that received advice of Philip's death, from the

emissaries of Charidemus, pretended a divine vision, and, with a shameless lie, declared that this intelligence had been conveyed to him, not by Charidemus, but by Zeus and Athene! Thus he dared to boast that these divinities, by whom he had sworn falsely in the day, had condescended to hold communication with him in the night, and to inform him of futurity. Seven days had now scarcely elapsed since the death of his daughter, when this wretch, before he had performed the usual rites of mourning, before he had duly paid her funeral honors, crowned his head with a chaplet, put on his white robe, made a solemn sacrifice in despite of law and decency; and this when he had lost his child-the first, the only child that had ever called him by the tender name of father! I say not this to insult his misfortunes; I mean but to display his real character: for he who hates his children, he who is a bad parent, cannot possibly prove a good minister. He who is insensible to that natural affection which should engage his heart to those who are most intimate and near to him, can never feel a greater regard for your welfare than for that of strangers. He who acts wickedly in private life cannot prove excellent in his public conduct; he who is base at home can never acquit himself with honor when sent to a strange country in a public character: for it is not the man, but the scene that changes.

I am now to speak of a third offence, and this still more heinous than the others. Philip by no means despised the Greeks; was by no means ignorant (for he was not devoid of all sense) that by a general engagement he must set his whole power on the hazard of a single day; he was inclined to treat about a compromise, and was on the point of sending deputies for this purpose; while the Theban magistrates, on their parts, were alarmed at the approaching danger, with good reason for it was not a dastardly speaker who fled from his post in battle that presented it to their thoughts, but the Phocian war, that dreadful contest of ten years, which taught them a lesson never to be forgotten. Such was the state of affairs, and Demosthenes perceived it: he suspected that the Boeotian chiefs were on the point of making a separate peace, and would receive Philip's gold without admitting him to a

share: and deeming it worse than death to be thus excluded from any scheme of corruption, he started up in the assembly before any man had declared his opinion that a peace should or should not be concluded with Philip, but with an intent of warning the Boeotian chiefs, by a kind of public proclamation, that they were to allow him his portion of their bribes: he swore by Athene (whom it seems Phidias made for the use of Demosthenes in his vile trade of fraud and perjury), that if any man should utter one word of making peace with Philip, he himself with his own hands would drag him by the hair to prison: imitating in this the conduct of Cleophon, who in the war with Lacedæmon, as we are informed, brought destruction on the state. But when the magistrates of Thebes paid no attention to him, but, on the contrary, had countermanded their troops when on their march, and proposed to you to consult about a peace, then was he absolutely frantic: he rose up in the assembly; he called the Boeotian chiefs traitors to Greece, and declared that he himself would move (he who never dared to meet the face of an enemy) that you should send ambassadors to the Thebans to demand a passage through their territory for your forces, in their march against Philip. And thus through shame, and fearing that they might really be thought to have betrayed Greece, were the magistrates of Thebes diverted from all thoughts of peace, and hurried at once to the field of battle.

And here let us recall to mind those gallant men whom he forced out to manifest destruction, without one sacred rite happily performed, one propitious omen to assure them of success; and yet, when they had fallen in battle, he presumed to ascend their monument with those coward feet that fled from their post, and pronounced his encomium on their merit. But O thou who, on every occasion of great and important action, hast proved of all mankind the most worthless, in the insolence of language the most astonishing, canst thou attempt in the face of these thy fellow-citizens to claim the honor of a crown for the misfortunes in which thou hast plunged thy city? Or, should he claim it, can you Athenians restrain your indignation? Has the memory of your slaughtered countrymen perished with them? Indulge me for a moment,

and imagine that you are now not in this tribunal, but in the theatre; imagine that you see the herald approaching, and the proclamation prescribed in this decree on the point of being delivered; and then consider, whether will the friends of the deceased shed more tears at the tragedies, at the pathetic stories of the great characters to be presented on the stage, or at the insensibility of their country? What inhabitant of Greece, what human creature who has imbibed the least share of liberal sentiments, must not feel the deepest sorrow when he reflects on one transaction which he must have seen in the theatre; when he remembers, if he remembers nothing else, that on festivals like these, when the tragedies were to be presented, in those times when the state was well governed, and directed by faithful ministers, a herald appeared, and introducing those orphans whose fathers had died in battle, now arrived at maturity, and dressed in complete armor, made a proclamation the most noble, and the most effectual to excite the mind to glorious actions: "That these youths, whose fathers lost their lives in fighting bravely for their country, the people had maintained to this their age of maturity: that now, having now furnished them with complete suits of armor, they dismiss them (with prayers for their prosperity) to attend to their respective affairs, and invite them to aspire to the highest offices of the state."

Such were the proclamations in old times; but such are not heard now. And, were the herald to introduce the person who had made these children orphans, what could he say, or what could he proclaim? Should he speak in the form prescribed in this decree, yet the odious truth would still force itself on you; it would seem to strike your ears with a language different from that of the herald; it would tell you that "the Athenian people crowned this man, who scarcely deserves the name of man, on account of his virtue, though a wretch the most abandoned; and on account of his magnanimity, though a coward and deserter of his post." Do not, Athenians! I conjure you by all the powers of Heaven, do not erect a trophy in your theatre to perpetuate your own disgrace: do not expose the weak conduct of your country in the presence of the Greeks: do not recall all their grievous