previous next
[95] And now that he is answerable for his misdeeds, and must stand his trial, being as he is a knave, a scoundrel, and—a government clerk,1 he will conduct his defence as if he were on trial for the peace, not to make his justification broader than his indictment—that would be folly—but because he can see in his own acts nothing that is good, nothing that is not criminal, while a defence of the peace, if it has no other merit, will enable him to pose as a Friend of Humanity.

1 Demosthenes often alludes scornfully to Aeschines' profession of γραμματεύς. Aeschines seems first to have been private secretary to the statesmen Aristophon and Eubulus. After his career on the stage, he obtained an under-clerkship in the Civil Service, and subsequently became Clerk of the Council and Assembly. This was an official of some dignity; he was appointed by popular election and enjoyed the privilege of free maintenance in the Prytaneum or Town Hall.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

load focus Greek (1903)
hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide References (4 total)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: