enmity? {284} But so soon as the news of the battle had come, you thought
no more of all this, but at once avowed and professed that you stood on a
footing of friendship and guest-friendship with him; though these were
nothing but your hireling-service under other names; for upon what honest
or equal basis could Aeschines, the son of Glaucothea the tambourine--
player,[n] enjoy the guest-friendship, or the friendship, or the
acquaintance of Philip? I cannot see. In fact, you had been hired by him
to ruin the interests of these your countrymen. And yet, though your own
treason has been so plainly detected--though you have been an informer
against yourself after the event--you still revile me, and reproach me
with crimes of which, you will find, any one is more guilty than I.

{285} Many a great and noble enterprise, Aeschines, did this city
undertake and succeed in, inspired by me; and she did not forget them. It
is a proof of this, that when, immediately after the event, the People had
to elect one who should pronounce the oration over the dead, and you were
nominated, they did not elect you, for all your fine voice, nor Demades,
who had just negotiated the Peace, nor Hegemon,[n] nor any other member of
your party: they elected me. And when you and Pythocles[n] came forward in
a brutal and shameless fashion, God knows! and made the same charges
against me as you are making again to-day, and abused me, the People
elected me even more decidedly. {286} And the reason you know well; but I
will tell it you nevertheless. They knew for themselves both the loyalty
and zeal which inspired my conduct of affairs, and the iniquity of
yourself and your friends. For what you denied with oaths when our cause
was prosperous, you admitted in the hour of the city's failure; and those,
accordingly, who were only enabled by the misfortunes of their country to
express their views without fear, they decided to have been enemies of
their own for a long while, though only then did they stand revealed.{287}
And further, they thought that one who was to pronounce an oration over
the dead, and to adorn their valour, should not have come beneath the same
roof, nor shared the same libation,[n] as those who were arrayed against
them; that he should not there join with those who with their own hands
had slain them, in the revel[n] and the triumph-song over the calamities
of the Hellenes, and then come home and receive honour--that he should not
play the mourner over their fate with his voice, but should grieve for
them in his heart. What they required they saw in themselves and in me,
but not in you; and this was why they appointed me, and not any of you.
{288} Nor, when the people acted thus, did the fathers and brothers of the
slain, who were then publicly appointed to conduct the funeral, act
otherwise. For since (in accordance with the ordinary custom) they had to
hold the funeral-feast in the house of the nearest of kin, as it were, to
the slain, they held it at my house, and with reason; for though by birth
each was more nearly akin to his dead than I, yet none stood nearer to
them all in common. For he who had their life and their success most at
heart, had also, when they had suffered what I would they had not, the
greatest share of sorrow for them all.

(_To the clerk _) {289} Read him the epitaph which the city resolved to
inscribe above them at the public cost; (_to Aeschines_) that even by
these very lines, Aeschines, you may know that you are a man destitute of
feeling, a dishonest accuser, an abominable wretch!


_The Inscription_.[n]

These for their country, fighting side by side,
By deeds of arms dispelled the foemen's pride.
heir lives they saved not, bidding Death make clear--
Impartial Judge!--their courage or their fear.
For Greece they fought, lest, 'neath the yoke brought low,
In thraldom she th' oppressor's scorn should know.
Now in the bosom of their fatherland
After their toil they rest--'tis God's command.