[24]
It was a noble decree, Athenians, a noble
decree of your ancestors on this question, providing for a pillar on the
Acropolis at the time when Arthmius, son of Pithonax, the Zelite, is said to
have brought the gold from the Persians to corrupt the Greeks.1 For before anyone had accepted
it or given proof of his character they sentenced the man who had brought the
gold to exile and banished him completely from the country. This decision, as I
said, they engraved on a bronze pillar and set up on the Acropolis as a lesson
for you their descendants; for they believed that the man who accepted money in
any way at all had in mind the interests of the donors rather than those of the
city.
1 Demosthenes （Dem. 9.42 and Dem. 19.271） refers to this pillar. Arthmius of Zelea was an Athenian proxenus. He was sent by Artaxerxes to the Peloponnesus, probably in 461, to stir up war against the Athenians, who had been assisting a revolt in Egypt. （Cf. Thuc. 1.109; Dio. Sic. 11.74. 5; Aeschin. 3.258.）
Dinarchus. 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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