209
You remember the most recent occasion, at Peiraeus only the other day, when you refused to appoint Aeschines to an embassy, how he bellowed at me: I will impeach you,—I will indict you,—aha! aha! In this exclamation Demosthenes perhaps imitates the melodramatic style and intonation of his adversary. Aeschines is like our stage villain, crying, Aha! A time will come. And yet a threat of impeachment involves endless speeches and litigation; but here are just two or three simple words that a slave bought yesterday could deliver: Men of Athens, here is a strange thing! This man accuses me of offences in which he himself took part. He says that I have taken bribes, when he took them, or shared them, himself.
210
He never spoke, he never uttered a word of that speech; none of you heard it; he only vented idle menaces. The reason is that he was conscious of guilt; he cowered like a slave before those words; his thoughts did not approach them but recoiled from them, arrested by his evil conscience. Mere vague invective and abuse there was no one to stop.
211
And now comes the strongest possible point—not a matter of assertion but of fact. I wished to do the honest thing, and to give an account of myself twice, because I had been appointed ambassador twice; but Aeschines approached the Court of Scrutiny, taking with him a crowd of witnesses, and forbade them to summon me, on the ground that I had already submitted to scrutiny, and was no longer liable. What was the real meaning of this ludicrous proceeding? Having himself rendered his account of the earlier embassy, with which nobody found fault, he did not wish to come into court in respect of the embassy for which he is now under examination; and that is the embassy that includes all his misdeeds.
