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It was a noble decree, Athenians, a noble decree of your ancestors on this question, providing for a pillar on the Acropolis at the time when Arthmius, son of Pithonax, the Zelite, is said to have brought the gold from the Persians to corrupt the Greeks.Demosthenes (Dem. 9.42 and Dem. 19.271) refers to this pillar. Arthmius of Zelea was an Athenian proxenus. He was sent by Artaxerxes to the Peloponnesus, probably in 461, to stir up war against the Athenians, who had been assisting a revolt in Egypt. (Cf. Thuc. 1.109; Dio. Sic. 11.74. 5; Aeschin. 3.258.) For before anyone had accepted it or given proof of his character they sentenced the man who had brought the gold to exile and banished him completely from the country. This decision, as I said, they engraved on a bronze pillar and set up on the Acropolis as a lesson for you their descendants; for they believed that the man who accepted money in any way at all had in mind the interests of the donors rather than those of the city.
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His was the only case in which they added the reason why the people banished him from the city, explicitly writing on the pillar that Arthmius, son of Pithonax, the Zelite, was an enemy of the people and its allies, he and his descendants, and was exiled from Athens because he had brought the Persian gold to the Peloponnese. And yet if the people regarded the gold in the Peloponnese as a source of great danger to Greece, how can we remain unmoved at the sight of bribery in the city itself? Please attend to the inscription on the pillar.
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Inscription
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Now what do you think those men would have done, Athenians, if they had caught a general or an orator, one of their own citizens, accepting bribes against the interests of their country, when they so justly and wisely expelled a man who was alien to Greece in birth and character? That is the reason why they faced danger against the barbarian worthily of the city and their ancestors.The conclusion of the speech is lost.
