103
It remains for me to say that Demosthenes was paid three talents for making this motion: a talent from Chalcis, paid over by Callias, a talent from Eretria, paid by the tyrant Cleitarchus, and a talent from Oreus. And it was this last by means of which he was found out; for the government of Oreus is a democracy, and everything is done there by popular vote. Now they, exhausted by the war and entirely without means, sent to him Gnosidemus, son of Charigenes, a man who had once been powerful in Oreus, to ask him to release the city from paying the talent, and to offer him a statue of bronze to be set up in Oreus.
104
But he replied to Gnosidemus that the last thing that he was in need of was bronze, and he tried to collect the talent through Callias. Now the people of Oreus, pressed for payment and without means, mortgaged to him the public revenues as security for the talent, and paid Demosthenes interest on the fruit of his bribery at the rate of a drachma per month on the mina,Twelve per cent a year, an ordinary rate of interest. until they paid off the principal.
105
This was done by vote of the people. To prove that what I am telling you is true, please take the decree of the people of Oreus.
105
Decree
105
This is the decree, fellow citizens, a disgrace to our city, no slight exposure of Demosthenes’ policies, and a clear accusation against Ctesiphon as well. For the man who so shamelessly received bribes cannot have been the good man that Ctesiphon has dared to set forth.
106
I come now to the third period, or rather to that bitterest period of all, in which Demosthenes brought ruin upon our state and upon all Hellas by his impiety toward the shrine at Delphi, and by moving the alliance with Thebes—an unjust alliance and utterly unequal. But I will begin with his sins against the the gods.
