This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
. . . the reports. On the contrary they have shown, as you will recognize, an exceptionally democratic spirit in handling the affair. They reported the guilty
persons; even this was not done from choice but in answer to repeated pressure from the people; and they did not undertake to punish them on their own responsibility but rightly left it to you, with whom the
final authority rests. It is not only his own trial which Demosthenes has in mind when he determines to mislead you by abusing the report; he wishes also to frustrate all the other prosecutions which the city has in hand. That is a point to be carefully borne in mind and you must not be deceived by the
defendant's argument. For these reports concerning the money of Harpalus have all been drawn up by the Areopagus on an equal footing. They are the same for all the accused. In no case has the council added the reason why it publishes a particular name. It stated summarily how much money each man had received, adding that he was
liable for that amount. Is Demosthenes to have more weight with you than the report given against him? . . .1 For of course this argument, if it protects Demosthenes, will also protect the rest. The sum on which you are pronouncing
judgement is not twenty, but four hundred,2 talents.
You are judging all the crimes, not one. For your mad conduct, Demosthenes, has made you champion of all these criminals, foremost in danger as you are in impudence. In my opinion the fact that you took the gold is proved to the jury well enough by your being condemned by the council to which you entrusted
yourself. . . .3 When Harpalus arrived in Attica, gentlemen of the jury, and the envoys from Philoxenus demanding him were, at the same time, brought into the Assembly, Demosthenes came forward and made a long speech in which he argued that it was not right for Athens to surrender Harpalus to the envoys from Philoxenus,4 and that Alexander must not be left with any cause for complaint, on his account, against the people; the safest course for the city was to guard the money and the person of Harpalus, and to take up all the money, with which Harpalus had entered Attica, to the Acropolis on the following day, while Harpalus himself should announce then and there how much money there was. His real purpose, it seems, was not simply
to learn the figure, but to find out from how large a sum he was to collect his commission. Sitting below in his usual place in the niche,5 he told Mnesitheus the dancer to ask Harpalus how much money there would be to take up to the
Acropolis. The answer given was seven hundred talents. . . .6 He had told you himself in the Assembly that that was the correct figure; and yet when the total brought up to the Acropolis was three hundred and fifty talents instead of seven hundred, having by then received his twenty, he did not utter a word. . . . After saying before the Assembly that there were seven hundred talents you now bring up
half. . . .7 Harpalus
would not have bought . . . nor would the city be exposed to accusation and reproach. But of all these things, Demosthenes . . . It was you who decreed that a guard should be posted over the person of Harpalus. Yet when it relaxed its vigilance you did not try to restore it, and after it was disbanded you did not prosecute those responsible. I suppose you went unpaid for your shrewd handling of the crisis? If Harpalus distributed his gold among the lesser
orators, who had nothing to give but noise and shouting, what of you who control our whole policy? Did he pass you over? That is incredible. So supreme is the contempt, gentlemen of the jury, with which Demosthenes has treated the affair, or to be quite frank, you and the laws, that at the outset, it seems, he admitted having taken the money but said that he had used it on your behalf and had borrowed it free of
interest8 for the Theoric fund. Cnosion9 and his other friends went about saying that Demosthenes would be compelled by his accusers to publish facts which he wished kept secret and to admit that he had borrowed the money free of interest for the state to meet expenses of government. Since the anger of those of you who heard this statement was greatly increased by these aspersions cast on your democracy, on the grounds that he was not content to have taken
bribes himself but thought fit to infect the people too . . .10 speaking and complaining that the Areopagus was seeking favor with Alexander and for that reason wanted to destroy him. As if you did not all know that no one destroys the kind of man who can be bought. On the contrary, it is the opponent who can be neither persuaded nor corrupted with bribes that men contrive to be rid of by any means in their power. There is some likelihood, it seems, that you, Demosthenes, are deaf to prayers and not to be persuaded into taking bribes? Do not imagine, gentlemen, that only trivial matters are affected by the venal conduct of these men. For it is no secret that all who conspire for power in Greece secure the smaller cities by force of arms and the larger ones by buying the influential citizens in them; and we know that Philip reached the height he did because, at the outset, he sent money to the Peloponnese, Thessaly, and the rest of Greece, and those with power in the cities and authority. . . .11
1 The sense of the missing words appears to be: “If you discredit the report, you thereby admit that no one took the money, and all the others are acquitted.”
2 The figure mentioned later, in column 10, is 350 talents, which is confirmed by Pseudo-Plut. Dem. 846 B. Hence Boeckh suggested the reading 400 in this passage, on the grounds that Hyperides would be more likely to exaggerate than otherwise.
3 Although the missing Greek words cannot be restored with certainty, the sense appears to be: “I shall now produce the evidence relating to the gold which you previously accepted, and, as I said, explain why you took the money and for what reasons you disgraced the whole city.”
4 Philoxenus, one of Alexander's generals, was governor of Cilicia at the time.
5 It is not known what niche is meant. It may have been a cutting in the side of the Pnyx. The word κατατομή is cited by Harpocration as occurring in this speech.
6 In the missing lines Hyperides probably explained that the Assembly was then dismissed and not summoned again until the following day, when the money had been paid over. Pseudo-Plut. Dem. 846 B, says that Demosthenes was accused of having taken bribes because he had not reported the amount of money brought to the Acropolis or the carelessness of those in charge of it.
7 The sense of the mutilated column 11 appears to be: “You did not reflect that if the whole amount originally mentioned was not taken up to the Acropolis someone must have embezzled. You were interested solely in your own fee; for you cannot persuade us that you received nothing when we know that Demades was paid 5000 staters.” For the bribe paid to Demades see Din. 1.89.
8 There does not seem to be an exact parallel for this use of the word προδανείζομαι and there are two possible interpretations. （1） The active προδανείζω apparently has the sense of “lend without interest” in Pseudo-Plut. Lives of the Ten Orators 852 B, and in Aristot. Ath. Pol. 16. If the translation given above is correct, Demosthenes claimed to have borrowed the money from Harpalus and to have advanced it to the Athenian people. （2） On the other hand the noun προδανειστής is used in a Delian inscription with the sense of “one who borrows for another.” On this analogy we might translate προδανεισμένος as “having borrowed for the people.” Demosthenes would thus be claiming to have acted as an intermediary in accepting a loan from Harpalus to the state.
9 Cnosion, a boy with whom Demosthenes was friendly, is mentioned also by Aeschin. 2.149, and by the scholiast on that passage.
10 The gist of the missing lines was probably that Demosthenes changed his tactics and began to plead a different excuse.
11 The words “he bribed” should probably be added to complete the sense.
Hyperides. Minor Attic Orators in two volumes, 2, with an English translation by J. O. Burtt, M.A. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1962.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
Purchase a copy of this text (not necessarily the same edition) from Amazon.com
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.