Moreover, this was not the sort of conversation in which we were engaged, but all the way we were forced to put up with Demosthenes' odious and insufferable ways. When we were discussing what should be said, and when Cimon remarked that he was afraid Philip would get the better of us in arguing his claims, Demosthenes promised fountains of oratory, and said that he was going to make such a speech about our claims to Amphipolis and the origin of the war that he would sew up Philip's mouth with an unsoaked rush,1 and he would persuade the Athenians to permit Leosthenes to return home,2 and Philip to restore Amphipolis to Athens.
1 The job would be so easy that he would not have to stop to soak the rush fiber and make it pliable. A proverbial expression.
2 Leosthenes was an Athenian orator and general, who had been condemned to death in 361 because of the failure of his campaign in the northern waters; he was now in exile in Macedonia. The recovery of Amphipolis would mollify the anger of the Athenians against him
Aeschines. Aeschines with an English translation by Charles Darwin Adams, Ph.D. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1919.
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