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. . . you tell us marvellous stories, little thinking that your conduct is no secret; you professed to be supporting the people's interests but were clearly speaking on behalf of Alexander. Personally I believe that even in the past everyone knew that you acted in this way over the Thebans, and over all the rest, and that you appropriated money, which was sent from Asia to buy help,1 for your own personal use, spending most of it; and now you engage in sea commerce and make bottomry loans, and having bought a house . . . you do not live in the Piraeus but have your anchorage outside the city.2 A popular leader worthy of the name should be the savior of his country, not a deserter. When Harpalus recently descended on Greece so suddenly that he took everyone by surprise, he found affairs in the Peloponnese and in the rest of Greece in this condition owing to the arrival of Nicanor with the orders which he brought from Alexander relating to the exiles3 and to the . . . of the Achaean, Arcadian, and Boeotian Leagues. . . . You have contrived this situation by means of your decree, because you arrested Harpalus. You have induced the whole of Greece to send envoys to Alexander, since they have no other recourse, and have prevented all the satraps, who by themselves would willingly have joined forces with us, each with money and all the troops at his disposal, not merely from revolting from him, by your detention of Harpalus, but also . . . each of them . . .4
1 Compare Din. 1.10, note and Din. 1.18-22; Aeschin. 3.239-240. Demosthenes was said by his opponents to have accepted money from Persia for use against Macedon, but to have withheld it when Alexander destroyed Thebes in 335 B.C.
2 The house in the Piraeus is mentioned by Din. 1.69; and Aeschin. 3. 209 uses these exact words.
3 Din. 1.82 also refers to this event, which took place in 324 B.C. Nicanor, the son-in-law of Aristotle, was sent by Alexander to Olympia to proclaim his demand for the return to their cities of all Greek exiles except the Thebans.
4 The general sense appears to be: “All the satraps united with Alexander. You yourself are now a supporter of his and have your agents with every important Macedonian.”
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.
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