Aeschines

Isocrates was able to sell a single oration of his for twenty thousand dollars.

When Aeschines, the great Athenian orator, had read to the Rhodians the speech which he had made on the accusation of Demosthenes, he then read the defence made by Demosthenes, through which he had been driven into exile among them.

When they expressed their admiration of it, he exclaimed, “How much more would you have admired it, if you had heard him deliver it himself!” A striking testimony, indeed, given in adversity to the merit of an enemy.

The nobles of Rome have given their testimony in favour of foreigners even.

As she says, "No doubt mistakes were made." Think Socrates, think Syracuse, Corcyra, Mytilene, or Cyrrhaeneia.

Demosthenes and Aeschines made a career of swaying their audiences in opposite directions in the fourth century.

A century earlier, Cleon, a demagogue under Pericles, berated the demos for its fickle susceptibility to bad arguments, all the while making one of his own.

Thucydides says of Pericles himself, and I quote, "That he controlled the mass of the people with a free hand, leading them rather than letting them lead him, not only as a shapeless crowd, as a homolos, but as a political body, a demosia, one that could freely, uh, easily restrain, he could freely restrain while pretending to give them a free choice.

But the indulgence of inverted sexual instincts within due limits cannot be proved to be especially pernicious.

Were it so, the Dorians and Athenians, including Sophocles, Pindar, Aeschines, Epaminondas, all the Spartan kings and generals, the Theban legion, Phidias, Plato, would have been one nation of rickety, phthisical, dropsical paralytics.

The grain of truth contained in this vulgar error is that under the prevalent laws and hostilities of modern society, the inverted passion has to be indulged furtively, spasmodically, hysterically.

That the repression of it through fear and shame frequently leads to habits of self-abuse, and that its unconquerable solicitations sometimes convert it from a healthy outlet of the sexual nature into a morbid monomania.

What has happened at Rome I perceive to have been the case in Greece.

The modern orators of that country, such as the priest Nicetes, and others who, like him, stunned the schools of Mytilene and Ephesus, are fallen to a greater distance from Aeschines and Demosthenes than Ophir and Africanus, or you, my friend, from Tully or Asinius Polio.

End of section 2 Section 3 of A Dialogue Concerning Oratory or The Causes of Corrupt Eloquence, by Publius Cornelius Tacitus, translated by Arthur Murphy.

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Socrates sometimes came to see her with his disciples, and his intimate friends brought their wives to her to hear her discourse, although she presided over a business that was anything but honest or even reputable, since she kept a house of young courtesans.

And Aeschines says that Lysiscledes the sheep-dealer, a man of low birth and nature, came to be the first man at Athens by having with Aspasia after the death of Pericles.

And in the Menoxenus of Plato, even though the first part of it be written in a sportive vein, there is at any rate this much of fact, that the woman had the reputation of associating with many Athenians as a teacher of rhetoric.

However, the affection which Pericles had for Aspasia seems to have been rather of an amatory sort.

The people accepted with delight these slanders, and so, while they were in this mood, a bill was passed, on motion of Dracontides, that Pericles should deposit his accounts of public monies with the Prytanes, and that the jurors should decide upon his case with ballots which had lain upon the altar of the goddess on the Acropolis.

But Hagnon amended this clause of the bill with the motion that the case be tried before fifteen hundred jurors in the ordinary way, whether one wanted to call it a prosecution for embezzlement and bribery, or malversation.

Well then, Aspasia he begged off, by shedding copious tears at the trial, as Aeschines says, and by entreating the jurors, and he feared for Anaxagoras so much that he sent him away from the city.

And since in the case of Phidias he had come into collision with the people, he feared a jury in his own case, and so kindled into flame the threatening and smouldering war, hoping thereby to dissipate the charges made against him and allay the people's jealousy, inasmuch as when great undertakings were on foot, and great perils threatened, the city entrusted herself to him and to him alone, by reason of his worth and power.

Demosthenes, the father of Demosthenes, belonged to the better class of citizens, as Theopompus tells us, and was surnamed Cutler because he had a large factory and slaves who were skilled workmen in this business.

But as for what Aeschines the orator says of the mother of Demosthenes, namely that she was a daughter of one Glaucon, who was banished from the city on a charge of treason, and of a barbarian woman, I cannot say whether he speaks truly or is uttering slander and lies.

However, at the age of seven, Demosthenes was left by his father in affluence, since the total value of his estate fell little short of fifteen talents.

But he was wronged by his guardians, who appropriated some of his property to their own uses and neglected the rest, so that even his teachers were deprived of their pay.

Moreover, he used to declare that he who rehearsed his speeches was a true man of the people; for such preparation was a mark of deference to the people, whereas heedlessness of what the multitude will think of his speech marks a man of oligarchical spirit, and one who relies on force rather than on persuasion.

Another circumstance, too, is made Proof of his lack of courage for an emergency, namely that when he was interrupted by the clamors of the people, Demades often rose and spoke offhand in his support, but he never rendered such a service to Demades.

How then, some might say, could Aeschines call him a man of most astonishing boldness in his speeches? And how was it that when Python of Byzantium was inveighing with much boldness and a great torrent of words against the Athenians, Demosthenes alone rose up and spoke against him? Or how did it happen that when Lamachus the Murian had written an encomium on Kings Philip and Alexander, in which many injurious things were said of Thebes and Olympos, and while he was reading it aloud at Olympia, Demosthenes came forward and rehearsed with historical proofs all the benefits which the people of Thebes and Chalcidice had conferred upon Greece, and on the other hand, all the evils of which the flatterers of the Macedonians had been the cause, and thereby so turned the minds of the audience that the sophist was terrified at the outcry against him and slunk away from the festival assembly.

But although Demosthenes, as it would appear, did not regard the other characteristics of Pericles as suitable for himself, he admired and sought to imitate the formality of his speech and bearing, as well as his refusal to speak suddenly or on every subject that might present itself, as if his greatness was due to these things, that he by no means sought the reputation which is won in a sudden emergency, nor did he often of his own free will stake his influence upon chance.