On the Crown
Peri tou Stephanou
A lifetime spent urging Athens to resist Philip of Macedon's expansion, even though that resistance ultimately ended in military defeat, was the right and honorable policy, and the political rival now attacking that record for having failed is a lesser man measured by any standard beyond hindsight.
- policy judged by wisdom, not by outcome
- defense of a lifetime resisting Macedonian expansion
- combination of legal argument and patriotic appeal
- regarded as antiquity's greatest oration
- total courtroom victory over Aeschines
On the Crown, delivered in 330 BC, is Demosthenes's speech defending his associate Ctesiphon, whom his rival Aeschines had years earlier prosecuted for illegally proposing an honorary crown for Demosthenes; speaking as Ctesiphon's advocate, Demosthenes used the trial as an occasion to defend his entire career of urging resistance to Philip II of Macedon, a resistance that had ended eight years earlier in Athens's defeat at Chaeronea. Demosthenes mounts a sweeping defense of his political record, arguing that a statesman must be judged by the wisdom of the policy given what was known at the time, not by its outcome. Widely regarded as antiquity's greatest oration, it won overwhelmingly: Aeschines failed to win even one-fifth of the jury's votes, the threshold that would have spared him a heavy fine and partial loss of civic rights, and he chose to withdraw from Athens to Rhodes rather than face the consequences.
Commentary
Readers' notes on this work. No account needed - be scholarly, or at least civil.
Loading commentary…