40
They were counsellors, Athenians, they were leaders such as yourselves and the state deserve. How different from rogues like this who neither have done nor will do the city any service but watch over their own safety and treat everything as a source of income. They have made the city more infamous than themselves, and now, convicted of taking bribes against you, they deceive you and presume, after conduct such as this, to talk to you about their own aggrandizement. They ought, by the terms of their own decree, to have been put to death long ago for doing such things.
41
Are you not ashamed, Athenians, that you should think our speeches the only evidence you have on which to determine the punishment of Demosthenes? Do you not know yourselves that this man is open to bribes and is both a robber and a traitor to his friends that neither he nor the fortune which has gone with him is fit for the city? Are there any decrees or any laws which have not brought him money?
42
Are there any people in the court who were among those included in the three hundred when Demosthenes brought in his law concerning the trierarchs?For the trierarch law see note on Hyp. frag. 43. Then tell your neighbors that he accepted three talents and used to alter and re-draft the law for every sitting of the Assembly, in some cases taking money over points for which he had been paid already, in others failing to honor the sales which he had made.
