300
Moreover, it can be shown by mere human reasoning that it is extremely injurious and dangerous to permit the intimacy of a prominent statesman with men whose purposes are at variance with those of the people. If you will consider by what means Philip acquired his political supremacy and performed his most signal achievements, you will find that it was by buying treachery from willing sellers, and by corrupting leading politicians and stimulating their ambition.
301
Both these practices it is within your power, if you so choose, to frustrate today, if you will first refuse to listen to the defenders of treachery, and prove that they cannot exercise that authority over you of which they boast, and then punish before the eyes of the world the man who has traitorously sold himself.
302
You have good reason, men of Athens, to be indignant with every man who by such conduct has thrown overboard your allies, your friends, and those opportunities on which, for any nation, success or failure depends, but with no man more fiercely or more righteously than with Aeschines. For a man who once ranged himself with those who distrusted Philip, and made unassisted the first discovery of Philip’s hostility to all Greece, and then became a deserter and a traitor and suddenly appeared as Philip’s champion—does he not deserve a hundred deaths?
303
Yet that such are the facts, he will not be able to deny. For who originally introduced Ischander to you, declaring him to have come as the representative of the Arcadian friends of Athens? Who raised the cry that Philip was forming coalitions in Greece and Peloponnesus while you slept? Who made those long and eloquent speeches, and read the decrees of Miltiades and Themistacles and the oath which our young men take in the temple of AglaurusAglaurus: daughter of Cecrops, legendary king of Attica; canonized for an act of patriotic self-devotion. In her chapel young Athenians, on admission to citizenship, received their arms, and took the oath of loyalty.?
