Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 1.djvu/273

 ÆSCHINES , or than the life which he has led: filled with hopes never to be gratified. and with armaments never to be raised. And while he diverted your attention from his fraud, while he kept you in suspense by his flattering assurances, he seized the favorable moment to make his grand attack, and moved that ambassadors should be sent to Eretria, who should entreat the Eretrians (because such entreaties were mighty necessary) not to send their contribution of five talents to Athens, but to intrust it to Callias; again, he ordained that ambassadors should be appointed to repair to Oreum, and to prevail on that state to unite with Athens in strict confederacy. And now it appeared, that through this whole transaction he had been influenced by a traitorous motive; for these ambassadors were directed to solicit the people of Oreum also to pay their five talents, not to you. but to Callias. To prove the truth of this read the decree—not all the pompous preamble, the magnificent account of navies, the parade and ostentation; but confine yourself to the point of fraud and circumvention, which were practised with too much success by this impious and abandoned wretch, whom the decree of Ctesiphon declares to have persevered, through the course of all his public conduct, in an inviolable attachment to the state.

Here is a errand account of ships and of levies, of the full moon, and of conventions. Thus were you amused by words; while in fact you