Page:History of Greece Vol XII.djvu/319

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

iESCHINES AND DEMOSTHENES. 287 years had thus elapsed since the formal entry of the accusation .' yet -(Eschines had not chosen to bring it to actual trial ; which indeed could not be done without some risk to himself, before the numerous and popular judicature of Athens. Twice or thrice before his accusation was entered, other persons had moved to confer the same honor upon Demosthenes,* and had been indicted under the Graphe ParanomS ; but with such signal ill-success, that their accusers did not obtain so much as one-fifth of the suffrages of the Dikasts, and therefore incurred (under the standing regulation of the Attic law) a penalty of 1000 drachmae. The like danger awaited ^schines ; and although, in reference to the illegality of Ktesiphon's motion (which was the direct and ostensible purpose aimed at under the Graphe Paranomon), his indictment was grounded on special agree with Droysen in mistrusting all the documents annexed to this ora tion ; all of them bear the name of wrong archons, most of them names of unknown archons ; some of them do not fit the place in which they appear See my preceding Vol. XI. Ch. Ixxxix. p. 424; Ch xc. p. 4.56-486. We know from the statement of -^schines himself that the motion of Ktesiphon was made after the appointment of Demosthenes to be one of the inspectors of the fortifications of the city ; and that this appointment took place in the last month of the archon Chserondas (June 337 b. c. — see ^schines adv. Ktesiph. p. 421-426). We also know that the accusation of ylCschines against Ktesiphon was preferred before the assassination of rhilip, which took place in August 336 b. C. (^schin. ib. p. 612, 613). ]t tluis appears that the motion of Ktesiphon (with the probouleuma which followed upon it) must have occurred some time during the autumn or winter of 337-336 B. c. — that the accusation of ^schines must have been handed in shortly after it — and that this accusation cannot have been handed in at the date borne by the pseudo-document, p. 243 — the month Elaphebolion of the archon Chterondas, which would be anterior to the ap- pointment of Demosthenes. Moreover, whoever compares the so-called motion of Ktesiphon, as it stands inserted Demosth. De Corona, p. 2GG, with the words in which j^schines himself (Adv. Ktesiph. p. 631. oi^ev rtiv upxi/v Toii Tl'Tiipifffiaro^ knoLrjacd, see also p. 439) describes the exordium of that motion, will see that it cannot be genuine. ' Demosthenes De CoronS, p. 253, 302, 303, 310. He says (p. 267-313) that he had been crowned ofien (tto/Mikic) by the Athenians and other Greek cities. The crown which he received on the motion of Aristonikua (after the successes against Philip at Byzantium and the Chersonesus, etc. in 340 B.C.) was the second crown (f.253^ — Plutarch, Vit. X. Oratt. i? «48.