[30]
Against what occasion will you reserve Demosthenes in the
belief that he will prove useful to you? Could any one of you, or of the
bystanders, say what public or private affairs he has not ruined by his contact
with them? After gaining access to the home of Aristarchus1 and planning with him the
death of Nicodemus which they contrived, an affair of which you all know the
details, did he not banish Aristarchus on the most shameful charges? And did not
Aristarchus find in Demosthenes such a friend as to make him think that this was
some evil spirit which had visited him and the originator of all his
misfortunes?
1 This story is told more fully by Aeschines （Aeschin. 1.171; Aeschin. 2.148 and Aeschin. 2.166）, who says that Aristarchus son of Moschus was a wealthy orphan, half mad, from whom Demosthenes, pretending to have taken a fancy to him personally, extracted three talents. He asserts that together they contrived to murder, with great brutality, Nicodemus of Aphidna who had once prosecuted Demosthenes for desertion; as the result of which crime Aristarchus went into exile. Demosthenes himself mentions the murder in his speech against Midias, where he claims that Midias went about casting suspicion on him and persuaded the relatives of Nicodemus to do likewise （Dem. 21.104）. Cf. Athen. 23.592 f.
Dinarchus. Minor Attic Orators in two volumes, 2, with an English translation by J. O. Burtt, M.A. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1962.
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