18
These proposals, when examined in court, were considered unsatisfactory, and the jury condemned you. So if you had been acquitted in your trial, Euxenippus would not have misrepresented the god: because you happened to be convicted, must ruin fall on him?Apparently it was loss of prestige which caused Polyeuctus to be resentful against Euxenippus, since the actual fine was negligible. And when you, who proposed a decree like that, were fined a mere twenty-five drachmas, is the man who lay down in the temple at the people’s request even to be refused a grave in Attica?
19
Yes, you say; for he committed a serious crime in regard to the cup which he allowed Olympias to dedicate to the statue of Health.Olympias, mother of Alexander the Great, was sent by him about 331 B.C. to Epirus, where her brother Alexander was king. On the death of the latter she became regent for the young prince Neoptolemus and so controlled Molossia, which had been attached to the kingdom by Philip in 343 B.C. The statue of Health stood on the Acropolis. (See Paus. 1.23.5.) It is not known how Euxenippus was connected with this affair. You think that if you bring her name irrelevantly into the case to serve your own ends and accuse Euxenippus of deceitful flattery, you will bring down the jury’s hatred and anger upon him. The thing to do, my friend, is not to use the name of Olympias and Alexander in the hope of harming some citizen.
20
Wait till they send the Athenian people some injunctions which are unjust or inappropriate. Then is the time for you to get up and oppose them in the interests of your city, disputing the cause of justice with their envoys and resorting to the Congress of the GreeksThe Congress, which united all Greek states except Sparta, was founded by Philip after the battle of Chaeronea in 338 B.C. as the champion of your country. But you never stood up or spoke about them there; it is only here that you hate Olympias
