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when Demosthenes as one of the trierarchs carried the general on his ship, and shared his table, his sacrifices, and his libations and how after he had been thus honored because the general was an old friend of his father’s, he did not hesitate, when the general was impeached, and was on trial for his life, to become one of his accusers; or, again, that story about Meidias and the blow of the fist that Demosthenes got when he was choregus, in the orchestra, and how for thirty minas he sold both the insult to himself and the vote of censure that the people had passed against Meidias in the theater of Dionysus.Meidias was a rich and domineering man,who had conceived a bitter hatred for Demosthenes in the course of the suites against Demosthenes’ guardians. When Demosthenes was serving as choregus, Meidias, meeting him in the orchestra, in the presence of the spectators, struck him in the face. The people, at a meeting held in the theater at the close of the festival, passed a vote of censure against Meidias, and Demosthenes instituted a suit in the courts; but finally, probably for worthy political reasons, he compromised the case.
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Now these incidents and all the others like them I think it is best to pass over; not that I would betray you, gentlemen of the jury, or politely yield this case to him, but because I fear that I shall encounter in you the feeling that, while all this is true, it is an old story, admitted by everybody. And yet, Ctesiphon, when a man’s utter shame is so credible to the hearers and so notorious that his accuser seems, not to be speaking what is false, but what is stale, and what everybody admits at the outset, ought that man to be crowned with a golden crown, or ought he to be censured? And you, who had the effrontery to make your false and unlawful motion, ought you to despise the courts, or ought you to give satisfaction to the city?
