On The Crown   

spoken thus, or produced such a stock of ponderous phrases, crying aloud,
as if he were acting a tragedy, 'O Earth and Sun and Virtue,'[n] and the
like; or again, invoking 'Wit and Culture, by which things noble and base
are discerned apart'--for, of course, you heard him speaking in this way.
{128} Scum of the earth! What have you or yours to do with virtue? How
should _you_ discern what is noble and what is not? Where and how did you
get your qualification to do so? What right have _you_ to mention culture
anywhere? A man of genuine culture would not only never have asserted such
a thing of himself, but would have blushed to hear another do so: and
those who, like you, fall far short of it, but are tactless enough to
claim it, succeed only in causing distress to their hearers, when they
speak--not in seeming to be what they profess.

{129} But though I am not at a loss to know what to say about you and
yours, I am at a loss to know what to mention first. Shall I tell first[n]
how your father Tromes was a slave in the house of Elpias, who kept an
elementary school near the temple of Theseus, and how he wore shackles and
a wooden halter? Or how your mother, by celebrating her daylight nuptials
in her hut near the shrine of the Hero of the Lancet,[n] was enabled to
rear you, her beautiful statue, the prince of third-rate actors? But these
things are known to all without my telling them. Shall I tell how Phormio,
the ship's piper, the slave of Dion of Phrearrii, raised her up out of
this noble profession? But, before God and every Heavenly Power, I shudder
lest in using expressions which are fitly applied to you, I may be thought
to have chosen a subject upon which it ill befits myself to speak. {130}
So I will pass this by, and will begin with the acts of his own life; for
they were not like any chance actions,[n] but such as the people curses.
For only lately--lately, do I say? only yesterday or the day before--did
he become at once an Athenian and an orator, and by the addition of two
syllables converted his father from Tromes into Atrometus, and gave his
mother the imposing name of Glaucothea,[n] when every one knows that she
used to be called Empusa[n]--a name which was obviously given her because
there was nothing that she would not do or have done to her; for how else
should she have acquired it? {131} Yet, in spite of this, you are of so
ungrateful and villainous a nature, that though, thanks to your
countrymen, you have risen from slavery to freedom, and from poverty to
wealth, far from feeling gratitude to them, you devote your political
activity to working against them as a hireling. I will pass over every
case in which there is any room for the contention that he has spoken in
the interests of the city, and will remind you of the acts which he was
manifestly proved to have done for the good of her enemies.

{132} Which of you has not heard of Antiphon,[n] who was struck off the
list of citizens,[n] and came into the city in pursuance of a promise to
Philip that he would burn the dockyards? I found him concealed in the
Peiraeus, and brought him before the Assembly; but the malignant Aeschines
shouted at the top of his voice, that it was atrocious of me, in a
democratic country, to insult a citizen who had met with misfortune, and
to go to men's houses without a decree;[n] and he obtained his release.
{133} And unless the Council of Areopagus had taken notice of the matter,
and, seeing the inopportuneness of the ignorance which you had shown, had
made a further search for the man, and arrested him, and brought him
before you again, a man of that character would have been snatched out of
your hands, and would have evaded punishment, and been sent out of the
country by this pompous orator. As it was, you tortured and executed him--
and so ought you also to have treated Aeschines. {134} The Council of
Areopagus knew the part which he had played in this affair; and for this
reason, when, owing to the same ignorance which so often leads you to
sacrifice the public interests, you elected him[n] to advocate your claims
in regard to the Temple of Delos, the Council (since you had appointed it
to assist you and entrusted it with full authority to act in the matter)
immediately rejected Aeschines as a traitor, and committed the case to
Hypereides. When the Council took this step, the members took their votes
from the altar,[n] and not one vote was given for this abominable man.