[139]
Though it was a scandalous shame enough, God knows,
openly to take Philip's side against his own country even before the war, make
him a present, if you choose, make him a present of that. But when our
merchantmen had been openly plundered, when the Chersonese was being ravaged, when the man was advancing upon
Attica, when there could no longer
be any doubt about the position, but war had already begun—even after
that this malignant mumbler of blank verse can point to no patriotic act. No
profitable proposition, great or small, stands to the credit of Aeschines. If he
claims any, let him cite it now, while my hour-glass1 runs. But there is none.
Now one of two things: either he made no alternative proposal because he could
find no fault with my policy, or he did not disclose his amendments because his
object was the advantage of the enemy.
1 hour-glass, the clepsydra or water-clock, used to measure the time allowed by the court to each speaker.
Demosthenes. Demosthenes with an English translation by C. A. Vince, M. A. and J. H. Vince, M.A. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1926.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
Purchase a copy of this text (not necessarily the same edition) from Amazon.com
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.