HKB
all the outrages--I know not what other word to use--that you have suffered, carry with you to your homes, through upholding their corruption, the curse and the guilt of perjury.
{221} Again, gentlemen of the jury, ask yourselves what reason I could have had for choosing to accuse these men, if they had done no wrong? You will find none. Is it pleasant to have many enemies? Pleasant? It is not even safe. Was there any quarrel between me and Aeschines? None. What then? 'You were afraid for yourself, and in your cowardice thought to save yourself this way:' for that, I have heard, is what he says. What? I was afraid, when, according to your own statement, there was nothing to be afraid of, and no crime had been committed? If he repeats such an assertion, men of Athens, consider[n] what these men themselves, the actual criminals, ought to suffer for their offences, if I, who am absolutely guiltless, was afraid of being ruined owing to them. {222} But what is my motive for accusing you? I am an informer, of course, and want to get money out of you![n] And which was the easier course for me--to get money out of Philip, who offered a large sum--to get as much as any of these men, and to have not only Philip for my friend, but also my opponents (for they would assuredly have been friends, had I been partner with them, since even now they have no inherited quarrel against me, but only the fact that I refused to join in their actions); or to beg them for a share of their gains, and be regarded with hostility both by Philip and by them? Is it likely that when I was ransoming the prisoners at such cost to myself, I should ask to receive a paltry sum from these men, in a disgraceful manner and with their enmity accompanying it? {223} Impossible! My report was true. I abstained from taking money for the sake of justice and truth and my own future. For I thought, as others among you have thought, that my own uprightness would receive its reward, and that I must not barter my ambition to stand well with you for gain of any kind. And I abhor these men, because I saw that they were vile and impious in the conduct of their mission, and because I have been robbed of the objects of my own ambition, owing to their corruption, now that you have come to be vexed with the Embassy as a whole. And it is because I foresee what must happen that I now accuse him, and appear to challenge his report; for I would have it decided here, in a trial before a jury, that my conduct has been the opposite of his. {224} And I am afraid--afraid, I say, for I will speak all my mind to you--that though when the time comes you may drag me in spite of my entire innocence to the same ruin with them, you are now utterly supine. For, men of Athens, you appear to me to be altogether unstrung, waiting to suffer the horrors which others are suffering before your eyes, and taking no precautions, no thought for the city, which for so long has been exposed to destruction in many a dreadful form. {225} Is it not, think you, dreadful and preternatural? For even where I had resolved upon silence, I am driven to speak. You doubtless know Pythocles here, the son of Pythodorus. I had been on very kindly terms with him, and to this day there has been no unpleasantness between us. He avoids me now, when he meets me--ever since he visited Philip--and if he is obliged to encounter me anywhere, he starts away immediately, lest any one should see him talking with me. But with Aeschines he walks all round the marketplace, discussing their plans. {226} Now is it not a terrible and shocking thing, men of Athens, that those who have made it their choice to foster Philip's interests should be able to rely upon so accurate a discrimination on Philip's part, that all that any one of them does here can no more be hid from Philip (so they believe) than if he were standing by their side, and that his friends and foes alike are those that Philip chooses; while those whose life is lived for your good, who are greedy of honour at your hands, and have not betrayed you, should be met by such deafness, such blindness, on your part, that to-day I have to wrestle with these devils incarnate on equal terms, and that before you, who know the whole truth? {227} Would you know or hear the cause of these things? I will tell you, and I beg that none of you be angry with me for speaking the truth. It is, I imagine, that Philip has but one body and one soul, and it is with all his heart that he cherishes those who do him good and detests those who do him evil: whereas each of you, in the first place, has no feeling that the good or the evil which is being done to the city, is being done to himself; {228} other feelings are of more consequence, and often lead you astray--pity, envy, anger, favour towards the suppliant, and an infinite number of other motives: while if a man has actually escaped all these, he will still not escape from those who do not want such a man to exist at all. And so the error due to each of these single causes steals on little by little, till the state is exposed to the whole accumulated mischief.