53
Now these incidents and all the others like them I think it is best to pass over; not that I would betray you, gentlemen of the jury, or politely yield this case to him, but because I fear that I shall encounter in you the feeling that, while all this is true, it is an old story, admitted by everybody. And yet, Ctesiphon, when a man’s utter shame is so credible to the hearers and so notorious that his accuser seems, not to be speaking what is false, but what is stale, and what everybody admits at the outset, ought that man to be crowned with a golden crown, or ought he to be censured? And you, who had the effrontery to make your false and unlawful motion, ought you to despise the courts, or ought you to give satisfaction to the city?
54
But concerning the crimes of his public life I will try to speak more explicitly. For I understand that when the defence are given opportunity to speak, Demosthenes will enumerate to you four periods in the history of the city as the periods of his own political activity.In fact, Demosthenes made no such division. One of them, and the first, as I hear, he reckons as the time of our war with Philip over Amphipolis. He marks this off by the peace and alliance that were made on motion of Philocrates of Hagnus, and with the cooperation of Demosthenes himself, as I shall show.