Thesauros Literature Oratory Κατά Κτησιφώντος

Κατά Κτησιφώντος

Κατά Κτησιφώντος Aeschines
236 But I would like to reckon up in your presence, fellow citizens, with the author of this motion, the benefactions for which he calls on you to crown Demosthenes. For if, Ctesiphon, you propose to cite that which you made the beginning of your motion, that he did good work in excavating the trenches around the walls, I am astonished at you. For to have been responsible for the necessity of doing the work at all involves an accusation greater than is the credit for having done it well. Indeed, it is not for surrounding the walls with palisades, and not for tearing down the public tombsWe learn from the orator Lycurgus (Lyc. Against Leocrates 44) that in the past to fortify the city immediately after Chaeronea the very tombs were made to yield stones, as they had done in the hurried fortifying by Themistocles after the Persian wars (Thuc. 1.93.1). Aeschines wrongly implies that these hurried emergency measures were a part of the work that was done later in a thorough manner under Demosthenes’ direction. that the statesman of clean record ought to ask reward, but for having been responsible for some good to the city.
237 But if you turn to the second part of your decree, in which you have had the effrontery to write that he is a good man, and constantly speaks and does what is best for the Athenian people, omit the pretence and the bombast of your decree, and take hold of the facts, and show us what you mean. I pass by his corruption in the case of the Amphissians and Euboeans; but when you give Demosthenes the credit for the alliance with Thebes, you deceive the ignorant and insult the sensible and well informed. For in failing to mention the crisis and the prestige of these your fellow citizens, which were the real reasons why the alliance was made, you think you prevent our seeing that you are crowning Demosthenes with the credit which belongs to the city.

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