As there was a law at Athens, that no one should be the cause of carrying a decree of the people that any one should be presented with a crown while invested with office till he had given in an account of the way in which he had discharged its duties; and another law, that those who had crowns given them by the people ought to receive them in the assembly of the people, and that they who had them given to them by the senate should receive them in the senate; Demosthenes was appointed a superintendent of repairs of the walls; and he did it at his own expense.  Therefore, with reference to him Ctesiphon proposed a decree, without his having given in any accounts, that he should be presented with a golden crown, and that that presentation should take place in the theatre, the people being summoned for the purpose, (that is not the legitimate place for an assembly of the people;) and that proclamation should be made, “that he received this present on account of his virtue and devotion to the state, and to the Athenian people.”  Aeschines then prosecuted this man Ctesiphon because he had proposed a decree contrary to the laws, to the effect that a crown should be given when no accounts had been delivered, and that it should be presented in the theatre, and that he had made false statements in the words of his motion concerning Demosthenes’s virtue and loyalty; since Demosthenes was not a good man, and was not one who had deserved well of the state.

That kind of cause is indeed inconsistent with the precedents established by our habits; but still it has an imposing look.  For it has on each side of the question a sufficiently clever interpretation of the laws, and a very grave contest as to the respective services done by the two rival orators to the republic.  Therefore the object of Aeschines was, since he himself had been prosecuted on a capital charge by Demosthenes, for having given a false account of his embassy, that now a trial should take place affecting the conduct and character of Demosthenes, that so, under pretence of prosecuting Ctesiphon, he might avenge himself on his enemy.  For he did not say so much about the accounts not having been delivered, as to the point that a very bad citizen had been praised as an excellent.

Aeschines instituted this prosecution against Ctesiphon four years before the death of Philip of Macedon.  But the decision took place a few years afterwards; when Alexander had become master of Asia.  And it is said that all Greece thronged to hear the issue of the trial.  For what was ever better worth going to see, or better worth hearing, than the contest of two consummate orators in a most important cause, inflamed and sharpened by private enmity?

If then, as I trust, I have given such a copy of their speeches, using all their excellencies, that is to say, their sentiments, and their figures, and the order of their facts; adhering to their words only so far as they are not inconsistent with our customs, (and though they may not be all translated from the Greek, still I have taken pains that they should be of the same class,) then there will be a standard to which the orations of those men must be directed who wish to speak Attically.  But I have said enough of myself—­let us now hear Aeschines speaking in Latin. (These Orations are not extant.)