Aeschines (; Greek: Αἰσχίνης, Aischínēs; 389–314 BC) was a Greek statesman and one of the ten Attic orators.
Aeschines (; Greek: Αἰσχίνης, Aischínēs; 389–314 BC) was a Greek statesman and one of the ten Attic orators.
Although it is known he was born in Athens, the records a propos his stock and upfront life are conflicting; but it seems probable that his parents, though poor, were respectable. Aeschines’ father was Atrometus, an elementary college teacher of letters. His mom Glaukothea assisted in the religious rites of start for the poor. After assisting his daddy in his school, he tried his hand at acting when indifferent success, served past distinction in the army, and held several clerkships, amongst them the office of clerk to the Boule. Among the campaigns that Aeschines participated in were Phlius in the Peloponnese (368 BC), Battle of Mantinea (362 BC), and Phokion’s move around in Euboea (349 BC). The fall of Olynthus (348 BC) brought Aeschines into the political arena, and he was sent on an embassy to toss around the Peloponnese neighboring Philip II of Macedon.
In spring of 347 BC, Aeschines addressed the assembly of Ten Thousand in Megalopolis, Arcadia urging them to unite and defend their independence against Philip. In the summer 347 BC, he was a advocate of the peace embassy to Philip, where he found it necessary, in order to counteract the prejudice excitedly fomented by his opponents, to defend Philip and describe him at a meeting of the Athenian popular assembly as being enormously Greek. His dilatoriness during the second embassy (346 BC) sent to ratify the terms of harmony led to him creature accused by Demosthenes and Timarchus upon a act of high treason. Aeschines counterattacked by claiming that Timarchus had forfeited the right to speak before the people as well as of juvenile debauches which had left him similar to the reputation of mammal a whore and prostituting himself to many men in the port city of Piraeus. The case succeeded and Timarchus was sentenced to atimia and politically destroyed, according to Demosthenes. This comment was superior interpreted by Pseudo-Plutarch in his Lives of the Ten Orators as meaning that Timarchos hanged himself upon leaving the assembly, a instruction contested by some objector historians.
This oration, Against Timarchus, is considered important because of the bulk of Athenian laws it cites. As a consequence of his affluent attack on Timarchus, Aeschines was cleared of the feat of treason.
In 343 BC the attack on Aeschines was renewed by Demosthenes in his speech On the False Embassy. Aeschines replied in a speech behind the similar title and was another time acquitted. In 339 BC, as one of the Athenian deputies (pylagorae) in the Amphictyonic Council, he made a speech which brought very nearly the Fourth Sacred War.
By artifice of revenge, Aeschines endeavoured to fix the blame for these disasters upon Demosthenes. In 336 BC, when Ctesiphon proposed that his buddy Demosthenes should be rewarded in the announce of a golden crown for his distinguished services to the state, Aeschines accused him of having violated the affect in bringing dispatch the motion. The thing remained in abeyance till 330 BC, when the two rivals delivered their speeches Against Ctesiphon and On the Crown. The repercussion was a unconditional and overwhelming victory for Demosthenes.
Aeschines went into voluntary exile at Rhodes (to avoid the judgement of the jury, which was likely a large sum of money), where he opened a intellectual of rhetoric. He afterwards removed to Samos, where he died aged seventy-five. His three speeches, called by the ancients “the Three Graces,” rank adjacent to those of Demosthenes. Photius knew of nine letters by him which he called The Nine Muses; the twelve published below his name (Hercher, Epistolographi Graeci) are not genuine.