Tuesday, April 30, 2024

 

The Destruction of the Phocians

Demosthenes 19.65-66 (On the Dishonest Embassy; tr. Arthur Wallace Pickard-Cambridge, with his notes):
For when recently we were on our way to Delphin we could not help seeing it all—houses razed to the ground, cities stripped of their walls, the land destitute of men in their prime—only a few poor women and little children left, and some old men in misery. Indeed, no words can describe the distress now prevailing there. Yet this was the people, I hear you all saying, that once gave its vote against the Thebans,n when the question of your enslavement was laid before them.

What then, men of Athens, do you think would be the vote, what the sentence, that your forefathers would give, if they could recover consciousness, upon those who were responsible for the destruction of this people? I believe that if they stoned them to death with their own hands, they would hold themselves guiltless of blood. Is it not utterly shameful—does it not, if possible, go beyond all shame—that those who saved us then, and gave the saving vote for us, should now have met with the very opposite fate through these men, suffering as no Hellenic people has ever suffered before, with none to hinder it? Who then is responsible for this crime? Who is the author of this deception? Who but Aeschines?

§ 65. on our may to Delphi. Demosthenes had been one of the Athenian representatives at the meeting of the Amphictyonic Council at Delphi this year.

gave its vote, &c. After the battle of Aegospotami at the end of the Peloponnesian War, the representative of Thebes proposed to the Spartans and their allies that Athens should be destroyed and its inhabitants sold into slavery.

ὅτε γὰρ νῦν ἐπορευόμεθ᾽ εἰς Δελφούς, ἐξ ἀνάγκης ἦν ὁρᾶν ἡμῖν πάντα ταῦτα, οἰκίας κατεσκαμμένας, τείχη περιῃρημένα, χώραν ἔρημον τῶν ἐν ἡλικίᾳ, γύναια δὲ καὶ παιδάρι᾽ ὀλίγα καὶ πρεσβύτας ἀνθρώπους οἰκτρούς· οὐδ᾽ ἂν εἷς δύναιτ᾽ ἐφικέσθαι τῷ λόγῳ τῶν ἐκεῖ κακῶν νῦν ὄντων. ἀλλὰ μὴν ὅτι τὴν ἐναντίαν ποτὲ Θηβαίοις ψῆφον ἔθενθ᾽ οὗτοι περὶ ἡμῶν ὑπὲρ ἀνδραποδισμοῦ προτεθεῖσαν, ὑμῶν ἔγωγ᾽ ἀκούω πάντων.

τίν᾽ ἂν οὖν οἴεσθ᾽, ὦ ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι, τοὺς προγόνους ὑμῶν, εἰ λάβοιεν αἴσθησιν, ψῆφον ἢ γνώμην θέσθαι περὶ τῶν αἰτίων τοῦ τούτων ὀλέθρου; ἐγὼ μὲν γὰρ οἶμαι κἂν καταλεύσαντας αὐτοὺς ταῖς ἑαυτῶν χερσὶν καθαροὺς ἔσεσθαι νομίζειν. πῶς γὰρ οὐκ αἰσχρόν, μᾶλλον δ᾽ εἴ τις ἔστιν ὑπερβολὴ τούτου, τοὺς σεσωκότας ἡμᾶς τότε καὶ τὴν σῴζουσαν περὶ ἡμῶν ψῆφον θεμένους, τούτους τῶν ἐναντίων τετυχηκέναι διὰ τούτους, καὶ περιῶφθαι τοιαῦτα πεπονθότας οἷ᾽ οὐδένες ἄλλοι τῶν Ἑλλήνων; τίς οὖν ὁ τούτων αἴτιος; τίς ὁ ταῦτα φενακίσας; οὐχ οὗτος;
The name Aeschines doesn't appear in the Greek, just the pronoun οὗτος.



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