127
If the slaves testify that I ever slept away from these messmates of mine, spare me not, fellow citizens, but rise up and kill me. But if you, Demosthenes, shall be convicted of lying, let this be your penalty—to confess in this presence that you are a hermaphrodite, and no free man. Please summon the slaves to the platform here, and read the testimony of my colleagues.
128
Testimony. Challenge
128
Since now he does not accept the challenge, saying that he would not rest his case on the testimony of tortured slaves, please take this letter, which Philip sent. For a letter that kept us busy writing all night long must obviously be full of clever deception of the city.
129
Letter
129
You hear, gentlemen, what he wrote: I gave my oath to your ambassadors; and he has written the names of those of his allies who were present, both the names of the representatives themselves and of their states; and he says he will send to you those of his allies who were not there in time. Does it seem to you that it would have been beyond Philip’s ability to write that in the daytime, and without my help?
130
But, by heaven, the only thing, apparently, that this man Demosthenes cares about, is to win applause while he is on the platform but whether or not a little later he will be considered the greatest scoundrel in Hellas, for that he appears to care not a whit. For how could one put any faith in a man who has undertaken to maintain that it was not Philip’s generalship, but my speeches, that enabled Philip to get this side Thermopylae! And he gave you a sort of reckoning and enumeration of the days during which, while I was making my report on the embassy, the couriers of Phalaecus, the Phocian tyrant, were reporting to him how matters stood in Athens, while the Phocians, putting their trust in me, admitted Philip this side Thermopylae, and surrendered their own cities to him.
