This was hardly how Demosthenes remembered the embassy, so ‘I rose, and said that the whole story was news to me. I attempted to repeat the statement I had made to the council, but Aeschines and Philocrates posted themselves one on either side of me, shouting, interrupting, and finally jeering. You were all laughing; you would not listen to me, and you did not want to believe anything except what Aeschines had reported.’
A dishonourable peace had been secured and Philip of Macedon’s ascendancy had continued unchecked. ‘Men of Athens,’ Demosthenes suggested, ‘nothing more awful or more momentous has befallen Greece within living memory, nor, as I believe, in all the history of the past.’ Athens had been duped by Philip of Macedon, a man who ‘has many claims to congratulation on his good fortune…Such achievements as the capture of great cities and the subjugation of a vast territory are, I suppose, enviable, as they are undoubtedly imposing; yet we could mention many other men who have done the like.’ But his ‘greatest stroke of good fortune…is that, when he needed scoundrels for his purposes, he found bigger scoundrels than he wanted’. He had found Aeschines, who had not been cajoled into treachery but ‘had sold himself, and pocketed the money, before he made his speech and betrayed us to Philip. To Philip he has been a trusty and well-beloved hireling; to you a treacherous ambassador and a treacherous citizen, worthy of threefold destruction.’
It was not too late to make amends, however. ‘Today you are not merely adjudging this case. You are legislating for all future time, whether every ambassador is basely to serve your enemies for hire, or without fee or bribe to give his best service to you.’ Philip could be warned that ‘he will have to remodel his methods’ when dealing with Athens. ‘At present his chosen policy is to cheat the many and court the few; but, when he learns that his favourites have been brought to ruin, he will wish for the future to deal with the many, who are the real masters of our state…For the sake of your honour, of your religion, of your security, of everything you value,’ Demosthenes implored the jury, ‘you must not acquit this man. Visit him with exemplary punishment, and let his fate be a warning not to our own citizens alone but to every man who lives in the Hellenic world.’7
It was rousing stuff, but Aeschines had prepared a compelling story of his own. From the outset he threw himself on the jury’s mercy. ‘I beg you, fellow citizens, to hear me with willing and friendly mind, remembering how great is my peril, and how many the charges against which I have to defend myself; remembering also the arts and devices of my accuser.’ This Demosthenes was hardly the most attractive of personalities, after all, Aeschines reminded the jury.
During the embassy to Philip he had been little more than a nuisance: ‘All the way we were forced to put up with Demosthenes’ odious and insufferable ways.’ That was as nothing when compared with his boastfulness, ‘the over-weening self-confidence of this fellow’. When the ambassadors were discussing their tactics, one of them had ‘remarked that he was afraid Philip would get the better of us in arguing his claims’. Demosthenes immediately ‘promised fountains of oratory, and said that he was going to make such a speech…that he would sew up Philip’s mouth as with an un-soaked rush’. Sadly, as Aeschines remembered it, events turned out rather differently.
When Demosthenes’ turn came to address Philip,
all were intent, expecting to hear a masterpiece of eloquence. For, as we learned afterwards, his extravagant boasting had been reported to Philip and his court. So when all were thus prepared to listen, this creature mouthed forth a proem [an introduction] – an obscure sort of thing and as dead as fright could make it – and getting on a little way into the subject he suddenly stopped speaking and stood helpless. Finally he collapsed completely.
Philip saw Demosthenes’s plight and generously assured him that his faltering speech was not an ‘irreparable calamity’. He was an ambassador, not an actor on the stage. He should calm himself and ‘try gradually to recall his speech, and speak it off as he had prepared it’. Unfortunately, ‘having been once upset, and having forgotten what he had written, he was unable to recover himself…and broke down again.’ Philip was deeply embarrassed and a herald ordered the ambassadors to withdraw. Demosthenes was mortified, at which point his sour feelings towards the entire embassy began to fester. To deflect attention away from his own risible performance, he suddenly began accusing the other ambassadors of negotiating against the best interests of Athens.
Through the rest of the ambassadors’ stay in Macedon, Demosthenes oscillated between showering Philip in fawning speeches and behaving ‘with shameless rudeness’ whenever he was invited to dinner. On the journey home his mood did seem to brighten. ‘Suddenly he began talking to each of us in a surprisingly friendly manner,’ promising to lend his support to their political careers and even praising Aeschines’s oratorical skills. One evening, ‘when we were all dining together at Larisa, he made fun of himself and the embarrassment which had come upon him in his speech, and he declared that Philip was the most wonderful man under the sun’. It was a ruse, however, an attempt to make the other ambassadors say complimentary things about Philip that he could later use as proof of their treachery.
Demosthenes had never been the warmest supporter of a peace treaty with Philip, and his experiences in Macedonia had only brought him humiliation. He was levelling charges of corruption, Aeschines suggested, as a political strategy, to rouse Athens against Philip of Macedon, and as a petulant gesture of revenge. Aeschines allowed that ‘the peace failed to please some of our public men’, but ‘ought they not to have opposed it at the time, instead of putting me on trial now?…They say that Philip bought the peace, that he overreached us at every point in the articles of agreement, and that the peace which he contrived for his own interests, he himself has violated.’ Aeschines disputed this analysis but, regardless, it seemed unfair to him that ‘although I was but one of ten ambassadors, I alone am made to give account.’
Finally, Aeschines invited the jurors to look around the courtroom. ‘Yonder is my father, Atrometus. There are few older men among all the citizens, for he is now ninety-four years old. When he was a young man, before the war destroyed his property, he was so fortunate as to be an athlete. Banished by the Thirty [Athens’ oligarchic governing body after the Peloponnesian War], he served as a soldier in Asia, and in danger he showed himself a man.’ Then there was his mother, a woman of extraordinary courage, who had followed her husband into exile and shared in his disasters.
Aeschines was portraying himself as the child of proud Athenian parents: ‘I myself, gentlemen, have three children, one daughter and two sons, by the daughter of Philodemus, the sister of Philon and Epicrates.’ He had brought them into court with the other family members ‘for the sake of asking one question and presenting one piece of evidence to the jury’.
For I ask, fellow citizens, whether you believe that I would have betrayed to Philip, not only my country, my personal friendships, and my rights in the shrines and tombs of my fathers, but also these children, the dearest of mankind to me. Do you believe that I would have held his friendship more precious than the safety of these children? By what lust have you seen me conquered? What unworthy act have I ever done for money? It is not Macedon that makes men good or bad, but their own inborn nature; and we have not come back from the embassy changed men, but the same men that you yourselves sent out.
‘With all loyalty I have served the city as her ambassador,’ Aeschines declared. ‘My speech is finished. This, my body, I and the law now commit to your hands.’8
Aeschines was acquitted, but only barely, and the damage done to his reputation would be catastrophic. He would always retain the whiff of scandal, ending his career not as an elder statesman in Athens, but as a teacher of rhetoric on the island of Rhodes. Demosthenes would even succeed in mobilizing public opinion against Philip of Macedon, but support came far too late (assuming it would ever have made any real difference). Just as Demosthenes had desired, Athens and Macedonia joined battle and, at Chaeronea in 338 BC, Athens was crushed. In its aftermath, Philip established the League