Athenian Assembly

When the Assembly met, Philip was already at Thermopylae.

Further, no one read the resolution to the Assembly, and the people never heard it.

but when the Assembly met, and we had to address the whole body of citizens, Aeschines took the first turn of all of us.

That question, he says, the chairman of the Assembly put, the people voted, and it was carried.

There is no need for me to tell the jury this, for you were present in the Assembly and know what happened there.

Is it not rather because he said of one of them, in the hearing of all of you in the Assembly, that he was a slave and born of slaves and ought by rights to pay the contribution of one-sixth with the resident aliens;

they mount the platform in the Assembly, where you look to your orators to explain their policy, not to flaunt their wickedness;

And yet, in spite of his performances and his character, he misses no opportunity in the Assembly of bellowing, I, only I, am your sincere well-wisher.

When I saw you in the Assembly indicating and proposing me as the accuser of Aristogeiton, I was troubled, and I call Heaven to witness that I did not relish the task.

But first the clerk shall read you the law which provides for the lodging of plaints in the Assembly;

The Prytanes shall call a meeting of the Assembly in the temple of Dionysus on the day next after the Pandia.

I lodged a plaint in the Assembly against him as an offender in connection with the festival, not only for his assault on my person at the Dionysia, but for many other acts of violence during the whole period when I served as chorus-master.

Again, not very long ago, he once more solemnly declared in the assembly that he had not adequate provision for his old age—he, who possesses so large an estate;

You know that he swore in the assembly, imprecating destruction upon himself and dedicating his property to sacred uses, if he should fail to indict Iphicrates as a usurper of the rights of citizenship.

Again, when you had removed him from his command as general because he failed to sail round the Peloponnesus, and he had been given over to the popular assembly for trial under a very heavy charge, when he was being prosecuted by Callistratus and Iphicrates, men of power both in action and in speech, and they and their fellow-pleaders so influenced your minds by their accusations against him that …

There are other proposals before you for raising supplies;

I wonder if any one of you in this audience watches and notes the steps by which Philip, weak at first, has grown so powerful.

For not only if someone comes forward with a well-considered plan, could you hear and accept it, but also I count it part of your good fortune that more than one speaker may be inspired with suitable suggestions on the spur of the moment, so that out of the multitude of proposals the choice of the best should not be difficult.

but to take a broad view of the question and to explore the best policy, with a regard for your interests and yet without party-spirit, that is the task of men who claim to offer advice in this Assembly.

The position of affairs, then, if one may judge from statements repeatedly made in your Assembly, is such that the Thebans will be weakened by the refounding of Orchomenus, Thespiae and Plataea, but the Lacedaemonians will regain their power, if they get Arcadia into their hands and destroy Megalopolis.

If you deal thus with public affairs and cease to neglect them entirely, perhaps, yes, perhaps even now there may be a change for the better.

As it is, by persuasive arts and caresses they have brought you to such a frame of mind that in your assemblies you are elated by their flattery and have no ear but for compliments, while in your policy and your practice you are at this moment running the gravest risks.

But as to the reason for this—and in Heaven’s name, when I am pleading for your best interests, allow me to speak freely—some of our politicians have been training you to be threatening and intractable in the meetings of the Assembly, but in preparing for war, careless and contemptible.

For if it had been a tragedy in the theater of Dionysus that you were watching and not a debate on the very existence of your state, you could not have shown more partiality to him and more ill-will against me.

While I am well aware, Athenians, that to talk in this assembly about oneself and one’s own speeches is a very profitable practice, if one has the necessary effrontery, I feel that it is so vulgar and so offensive that, though I see the necessity, I shrink from it.

And this he did with the approval of your Assembly.

Again, your general, Callias, captured the cities on the Pagasaean Gulf, every one of them, though they were protected by treaty with you and were in alliance with me all merchants sailing to Macedonia he regarded as enemies and sold them into slavery.

In the first place, when Nicias, my herald, was kidnapped from my territory, you not only failed to bring the law-breakers to justice, but you kept the victim a prisoner for ten months, and the letters from me, of which he was the bearer, you read before your Assembly.

Yes, men of Athens, this is the turning point of Philip’s career.

For an impartial investigation, men of Athens, would trace the source of Philip’s greatness not to himself, but to this very platform.

I wonder that no one here, men of Athens, can count up how many years you have been at war with Philip, and what you have been doing all that long time.

It is for you to choose what is likely to benefit the city and all of you.

Perhaps you will say, Of course we all know that we must send an expedition, and we are willing to do so;

Well, it was the month of Maemacterion, and there was a long and excited debate in the Assembly, and you finally decided to launch a fleet of forty vessels manned by citizens under the age of forty-five, and to raise forty talents by a special tax.

but from your deliberations you have banished it utterly.

but since some of you are in such a strange mood that, though Philip is seizing cities, and retaining many of your possessions, and inflicting injury on everybody, you tolerate some speakers who repeatedly assert in the Assembly that the real aggressors are certain of ourselves, we must be on our guard and set this matter right.

Many speeches are delivered, men of Athens, at almost every meeting of the Assembly, about the wrongs that Philip has been committing, ever since the conclusion of peace, not only against you but also against the other states, and all the speakers would, I am sure, admit in theory, though they do not put it in practice, that the object both of our words and deeds must be to check and chastise his arrogance;

The King as political chief is contrasted with the Popular Assembly;

The Athenian Assembly made true laws for residents on Attic territory, but the dominion of Athens over her subject cities and islands was clearly a tax-taking as distinguished from a legislating Empire.

From this embryo have sprung all the most famous legislatures of the world, the Athenian Ekklesia, the Roman Comitia, Senate and Prince, and our own Parliament, the type and parent of all the ‘collegiate sovereignties’ (as Austin would call them) of the modern world, or in other words of all governments in which sovereign power is exercised by the people or shared between the people and the King.

for in the past you have formed the habit of driving all the orators from the platform except those who support your desires.

All those who come before you on this platform are accustomed to assert that the subjects upon which they are themselves about to advise you are most important and most worthy of serious consideration by the state.

For we are assembled here to deliberate about War and Peace, which exercise the greatest power over the life of man, and regarding which those who are correctly advised must of necessity fare better than the rest of the world.

Alcibiades, on what subject do the Athenians propose to take advice, that you should stand up to advise them?

You think that if you come shortly before the Athenian Assembly—which you expect to occur in a very few days—you will stand forth and prove to the people that you are more worthy of honor than either Pericles or anyone else who has ever existed, and that having proved this you will have the greatest power in the state;

At these words an uproar again ran through the Assembly;

Thereupon the Athenians shouted their approval, saying that Cleiteles had spoken to the point and fairly.

While the Assembly itself was trying to determine these matters, Cleiteles, a Corinthian, arose and spoke as follows:

Well, don’t you think the Assembly often laughs at sound argument?

and yet you are shy of addressing men who never gave a thought to public affairs and haven’t learnt to despise you — all because you fear ridicule!

The fullers or the cobblers or the builders or the smiths or the farmers or the merchants, or the traffickers in the market-place who think of nothing but buying cheap and selling dear?