Tiresias: The Ancient Mediterranean Religions Source Database

4413

Demosthenes, Orations, 19.246-19.250
nan Well, when he tries to insult other people by calling them speech-makers and charlatans, he shall be shown to be open to the same reproach. For those iambics come from the Phoenix of Euripides. That play was never acted by Theodorus or Aristodemus, for whom Aeschines commonly took the inferior parts; Molon however produced it, and perhaps some other players of the old school. But Sophocles’ Antigone was frequently acted by Theodorus, and also by Aristodemus; and in that play there are some iambic lines, admirably and most instructively composed. That passage Aeschines omitted to quote, though he has often spoken the lines, and knows them by heart;
nan for of course you are aware that, in all tragic dramas, it is the enviable privilege of third-rate actors to come on as tyrants, carrying their royal scepters. Now you shall weigh the merits of the verses which were specially written by the poet for the character of Creon-Aeschines, though he forgot to repeat them to himself in connection with his embassy, and did not quote them to the jury. Read. Iambics from the Antigone of Sophocles Who shall appraise the spirit of a man, His mind, his temper, till he hath been proved In ministry of laws and government? I hold, and long have held, that man a knave Who, standing at the helm of state, deserts The wisest counsel, or in craven fear Of any, sets a curb upon his lips. Who puts his friend above his fatherland I scorn as nothing worth; and for myself, Witness all-seeing Heaven! I will not hold My peace when I descry the curse that comes To sap my citizens’ security; Nor will I count as kin my country’s foes; For well I wot our country is the ship That saves us all, sailing on even keel: Embarked in her we fear no dearth of friends. Soph. Ant. 175-190
nan Aeschines did not quote any of these lines for his own instruction on his embassy. He put the hospitality and friendship of Philip far above his country,—and found it more profitable. He bade a long farewell to the sage Sophocles; and when he saw the curse that came,—to wit, the army advancing upon the Phocians,—he sounded no warning, sent no timely report; rather he helped both to conceal and to execute the design, and obstructed those who were ready to tell the truth.
nan He forgot the ship that saves; forgot that embarked in her his own mother, performing her rites, scouring her candidates, making her pittance from the substance of her employers, here reared her hopeful brood to greatness. Here, too, his father, who kept an infant-school, lived as best he could,—next door to Heros the physician, Heros the Physician: or the Hero Physician; see Dem. 18.129, and note. as I am told by elderly informants,—anyhow, he lived in this city. The offspring of this pair earned a little money as junior clerks and messengers in the public offices, until, by your favor, they became full-fledged clerks, with free maintenance for two years in the Rotunda. The Prytaneum or Town Hall. Finally, from this same city Aeschines received his commission as ambassador.
nan He cared for none of these obligations; he took no thought that the ship of state should sail on even keel; he scuttled her and sank her, and so far as in him lay put her at the mercy of her foes. Are not you then a charlatan? Yes, and a vile one too. Are not you a speech-writer? Yes, and an unprincipled one to boot. You passed over the speech that you so often spoke on the stage, and knew by heart; you hunted up rant that in all your career you had never declaimed in character, and revived it for the undoing of your own fellow-citizen.

Intertexts (texts cited often on the same page as the searched text):

5 results
1. Isocrates, Orations, 12.203 (5th cent. BCE - 4th cent. BCE)
2. Thucydides, The History of The Peloponnesian War, 8.68.1 (5th cent. BCE - 4th cent. BCE) 8.68.1. The man who moved this resolution was Pisander, who was throughout the chief ostensible agent in putting down the democracy. But he who concerted the whole affair, and prepared the way for the catastrophe, and who had given the greatest thought to the matter, was Antiphon, one of the best men of his day in Athens ; who, with a head to contrive measures and a tongue to recommend them, did not willingly come forward in the assembly or upon any public scene, being ill-looked upon by the multitude owing to his reputation for talent; and who yet was the one man best able to aid in the courts, or before the assembly, the suitors who required his opinion.
3. Aeschines, Letters, 1.94, 1.125, 1.141-1.154, 1.173, 1.175-1.176, 2.180, 3.16, 3.173 (4th cent. BCE - 4th cent. BCE)
4. Aeschines, Or., 1.125, 1.141-1.154, 1.173, 1.175-1.176, 3.202
5. Demosthenes, Orations, 18.276-18.284, 19.247-19.250

Subjects of this text:

subject	book bibliographic info
aeschines,against timarchus	Hesk (2000), Deception and Democracy in Classical Athens, 214
aeschines,on demosthenes sophistry	Hesk (2000), Deception and Democracy in Classical Athens, 214
aeschines	Castagnoli and Ceccarelli (2019), Greek Memories: Theories and Practices, 148; Gagarin and Cohen (2005), The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek Law, 102; Hesk (2000), Deception and Democracy in Classical Athens, 212, 214
anaximenes of lampsacus	Hesk (2000), Deception and Democracy in Classical Athens, 212
antiphon,anti-rhetoric	Hesk (2000), Deception and Democracy in Classical Athens, 212, 214
deception,and athenian paideia	Hesk (2000), Deception and Democracy in Classical Athens, 176
deception,and sophistry	Hesk (2000), Deception and Democracy in Classical Athens, 212, 214
deception,association with rhetoric	Hesk (2000), Deception and Democracy in Classical Athens, 212, 214
deinotes legein (cleverness at speaking)	Hesk (2000), Deception and Democracy in Classical Athens, 212, 214
democracy,athenian,and noble lies,and its oratory	Hesk (2000), Deception and Democracy in Classical Athens, 212, 214
democracy,athenian,and noble lies	Hesk (2000), Deception and Democracy in Classical Athens, 176
demosthenes,and the noble lie	Hesk (2000), Deception and Democracy in Classical Athens, 176
demosthenes,attacks aeschines as sophist	Hesk (2000), Deception and Democracy in Classical Athens, 212, 214
demosthenes,on paideia and lying	Hesk (2000), Deception and Democracy in Classical Athens, 176
demosthenes,representation of deceit	Hesk (2000), Deception and Democracy in Classical Athens, 176, 212, 214
demosthenes,works,against leptines	Hesk (2000), Deception and Democracy in Classical Athens, 176
demosthenes,works,on the crown	Hesk (2000), Deception and Democracy in Classical Athens, 214
demosthenes	Hesk (2000), Deception and Democracy in Classical Athens, 176, 212, 214
fiction,and paideia,as good lying	Hesk (2000), Deception and Democracy in Classical Athens, 176
fiction,and paideia,popular notions of	Hesk (2000), Deception and Democracy in Classical Athens, 176
goeteia (wizardry)	Hesk (2000), Deception and Democracy in Classical Athens, 212
homer,and fiction	Hesk (2000), Deception and Democracy in Classical Athens, 176
law,athenian.	Gagarin and Cohen (2005), The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek Law, 102
legal profession	Gagarin and Cohen (2005), The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek Law, 102
logography,logographer	Gagarin and Cohen (2005), The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek Law, 102
logography (speech-writing)	Hesk (2000), Deception and Democracy in Classical Athens, 212, 214
negotiability,and anti-rhetorical terms	Hesk (2000), Deception and Democracy in Classical Athens, 212
noble lie	Hesk (2000), Deception and Democracy in Classical Athens, 176
orators,attic	Gagarin and Cohen (2005), The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek Law, 102
oratory	Gagarin and Cohen (2005), The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek Law, 102
pindar	Hesk (2000), Deception and Democracy in Classical Athens, 176
rhetoric,of anti-rhetoric	Hesk (2000), Deception and Democracy in Classical Athens, 212, 214
sophistry,accusations of	Hesk (2000), Deception and Democracy in Classical Athens, 212, 214
sophistry,vignettes of	Hesk (2000), Deception and Democracy in Classical Athens, 214
survival of'	Gagarin and Cohen (2005), The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek Law, 102
sycophants	Hesk (2000), Deception and Democracy in Classical Athens, 212
topoi,and interplay with creative strategy	Hesk (2000), Deception and Democracy in Classical Athens, 214
tragedy,and fiction	Hesk (2000), Deception and Democracy in Classical Athens, 176