SOURCE: “The Portrait of Aeschines in the Oration on the Crown,” in Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, Vol. 97, 1966, pp. 397-406.

[In the following essay, Rowe contends that Demosthenes succeeded in his major attack on Aeschines by representing him as a comic impostor.]

The separate techniques of character assassination employed by Demosthenes and Aeschines in their famous oratorical duel were distinguished by Ivo Bruns who, with obvious disapproval, noted that Demosthenes' portrait of his enemy had little factual basis; Aeschines, on the other hand, he praised for skilfully exploiting his opponent's weaknesses in such a way that his description, though unfavorable, was true in many respects to its object.¹ It is significant that this distinction of the two portraits harmonizes with the basic difference in tenor of the two orations. Aeschines' Against Ctesiphon makes telling use of strong factual evidence (e.g. the illegality of Ctesiphon's proposal, the disastrous consequences of Demosthenes' policies), while the Oration on the Crown skirts the facts and seeks to establish the issue on an abstract, moral plane. Lacking strong refutation for Aeschines' specific charges, Demosthenes was concerned that his defense transcend the finite situation and assume universal validity. From the standpoint of character portrayal, it was not his intention to represent the real Aeschines but to create an idealized, and therefore fictional, type who would play a well defined role among the other dramatis personae of his oration.

The terms of abuse referring to Aeschines are highly suggestive of the language of Greek comedy. Out of 47 instances of derogatory epithet in the Oration on the Crown, 39 can be found in the plays of Aristophanes and in the comic fragments.² These include pejoratives which, though frequently used in comedy, are also common in other kinds of Greek literature, so that comic usage does not necessarily imply that the epithets are comic per se. There are, however, convincing indications that Demosthenes' description of Aeschines is to have comic overtones. The language of comedy is characterized by its quest for the bizarre effect through neologisms and strange compounds. Demosthenes in his portrayal of Aeschines resorts to the same technique. … The diminutive is another type of comic expression in the speech. Aeschines is called a “manikin” (242 …); he fawns upon “petty officials” (261 …). The animal world was for Aristophanes a chief source for human caricature, as the titles Wasps, Birds, and Frogs will reveal. The epithet [kínados] (Sicilian word for “fox”) is twice (162, 242) applied to Aeschines, and … “ape,” is used once (242). Both words appear as epithets in comedy.³ Aeschines' cowardice is underscored by the proverb, “you lived the life of a rabbit” (263). As a final species of comic language one may note words with unusual sounds. …⁴

In addition to epithets appearing only once or twice, there are comic descriptions and associations reiterated throughout the speech. Demosthenes seizes every opportunity to stress Aeschines' greed and the demeaning occupations to which it had led him. Aeschines and his kind are characterized as men “who measure happiness by their bellies and by their shame” (296).⁵ Demosthenes depicts him as a young boy leading a procession of Bacchanals and receiving for his services “sops and rolls and cakes” (260). After becoming a citizen, Aeschines took the job of waiting on petty magistrates (261). Subsequently he hired himself out to a troupe of actors and played the smallest parts, taking for his pay “figs and grapes and olives” (262).⁶ Aeschines is like a “balance verging to the side of monetary gain” (298). The Orator stresses the idea that his opponent has sold his loyalty to the enemy.⁷ He refuses to grace Aeschines' association with Alexander and Philip by the name of friendship (52):

I rebuke you for friendship with Alexander? When did you get it, or how did you rate it? I certainly wouldn't call you the guest of Alexander or the friend of Philip—I'm not so daffy—unless one must call hired hands and wage-earners the friends and guests of their employers.

Like the other recurrent descriptions which will be examined, the picture of Aeschines as the hireling demonstrates Demosthenes' constant attempt to expose Aeschines as something less than he pretends to be.

A second recurring association is made of Aeschines with sickness and physical affliction. Demosthenes refers to his opponents as “polluted men, each of whom mutilated his own country” (296). Early in the speech he describes his efforts on Athens' behalf and attributes their lack of success to the fact that “the cities were diseased; their political leaders were corrupting themselves by taking bribes” (45). Against this background of sickness Aeschines is often inserted. In one instance he is regarded as a symptom (198):

Suppose something is being done which supports Athenian interests; Aeschines is silent. Suppose there has been trouble, and something unexpected has occurred; Aeschines is to the fore, like ruptures and strains in the body when it is afflicted by some disease.

Aeschines, Demosthenes declares, has never tendered any “healthy” … advice (23). Instead, he is like a doctor who, while his patients are ill, refuses to prescribe a remedy, but, when their funeral rites are being observed, joins the procession explaining in detail what the victim should have done to escape death (243). Elsewhere Aeschines is regarded not as the doctor but as the victim of illness. When there is need for constructive counsel, Aeschines maintains a “festering” … silence (307). The particular malady from which he suffers is madness. Demosthenes calls him “thunderstruck” (243), a recurring comic epithet. His raving madness requires a dose of hellebore (121). The imagery of physical corruption reaches its climax in Demosthenes' concluding prayer (324):

I pray to all the gods that they refuse assent to this desire but rather implant in these men a better mind and a better spirit; if they are beyond cure, may they and they alone be quickly and utterly destroyed.

Medical language is frequent in Greek comedy.⁸ The quack-doctor, a character who pretends to be what he is not, appears regularly as a comic type.⁹

The greatest concentration of Demosthenes' invective is leveled at his opponent's career as an actor. “Third-rate actor” …¹⁰ is an epithet applied to Aeschines five times. But there is strong indication that Demosthenes wanted to do more than disparage his opponent's ability; he wanted to place it in the realm of comedy. In the epithets one notices the incongruous joining of nouns and modifiers. Aeschines is called a “tragic Theocrines” (313), an allusion to an actor who belied the dignity of tragedy by turning sycophant and informer. Another incongruous epithet is “errant tragic ape” (242), where the coupling of the word “tragic” with a comic epithet not only vitiates the serious nature of tragedy but also establishes the bizarre aura of comedy.¹¹ “Rustic Oenomaus” (242) illustrates the same technique. The story was told that Aeschines, while playing the role of Sophocles' Oenomaus, stumbled on the stage and, encumbered by his costume, was unable to regain his feet.¹² The adjective “rustic” suggests two ideas: First, Demosthenes mentions that Aeschines “murdered miserably Oenomaus” (180) at the country Dionysia in Collytus—a slur on the quality of the acting. Not so well-defined, but nonetheless inherent, in the term “rustic” is the comic level to which Aeschines had reduced the tragic hero Oenomaus.¹³ In addition to the epithets, which undermine Aeschines' stage career by throwing it into comic perspective, Demosthenes provides a humorous account of the performances (262):

You hired yourself out to the actors Simucas and Socrates, known as “The Heavy Groaners”; and you played your third parts while collecting figs and grapes and olives, like a produce dealer from other people's gardens, getting more from this source than from your dramatic contests, in which you and your troupe contested for your lives. For there was a constant and truceless war between you and the spectators, from whom you received so many wounds that you naturally consider cowards those who have had no experience in these hazards.

Parody of tragedy is a favorite ploy of comedy. Not only tragic themes and characters but also tragic actors and playwrights are fed into its gristmill. One will recall that in the Frogs the tragedians Aeschylus and Euripides, by parodying each other's lines, are reduced to comic stature. Demosthenes likewise travesties some excerpts from Aeschines' performances (267). Aeschines' real forte, he implies, is comedy, not tragedy. In the present lawsuit “he is playing a stage part, piling up charges and jokes and abuse” (15). He screams all kinds of filthy names at Demosthenes, “like a comic reveler from a wagon” (122).

The three recurrent images of Aeschines as the political hireling, the quack-doctor, and the third-rate actor have both individual and combined significance. Separately they may be seen as emphasizing Aeschines' venality, corruption, and hypocrisy. But what all three have in common is indicative of a more subtle purpose than solely that of assailing an opponent in the usual manner. The three descriptions represent a specific type of comic character—the alazôn. Close parallels to Aeschines as the political hireling are found in some of the alazones of Aristophanes. The venal and name-dropping Commissioner in the Birds (1025-33) is one example. In the Acharnians (133-41) Theorus, who gave himself up to the luxuries of Sitacles' palace and neglected the business of his embassy, is identified as an alazôn.¹⁴ The quack-doctor, though not prominent in any complete extant comedies, was a common alazôn type; and the disparagement of Aeschines' dramatic career is similar to that suffered by the alazones Euripides and Aeschylus in the Frogs.¹⁵ Aristotle, to whom we are indebted for the technical application of the term, defines the alazôn as “one who pretends to have worthy qualities which he either does not possess or which he possesses in a lesser degree than he claims” (EN 1127a21). In the plays of Aristophanes the alazôn also may be seen as the intruder,¹⁶ such as the alazones in the Birds (904-1057), who attempt to establish themselves in Cloudcuckooborough and are summarily exposed and expelled. It was Demosthenes' purpose to represent Aeschines as the comic impostor and, in so doing, to expose and alienate him.

Although comic elements often appear in the language of oratorical invective,¹⁷ Demosthenes' exploitation of the comic idiom is unique because of its intensity and consistency. The portrait of Aeschines as the comic alazôn is too relentlessly held up to view not to be the result of deliberate design. From a tactical standpoint, however, such a portrait incurs serious disadvantages. There is the danger that it would be too fictitious and consequently incredible to the audience. A second danger lies in the nature of the alazôn, who tends to be an ineffectual bluff rather than a sinister threat. If he failed to present Aeschines as a dark adversary Demosthenes could not have expected his counteraccusations to carry much weight.¹⁸ The reason overriding these disadvantages can be found in Demosthenes' defense of his own policies.

From 350 b.c. until the defeat at Chaeronea in 338, Demosthenes had constantly advocated armed resistance to Philip's growing domination. He had succeeded in creating an alliance of other Greek states under the leadership of Athens. Philip's victory was no foregone conclusion. It appeared that the alliance, having enjoyed initial successes, was a match for him in battle. But, in the words of Plutarch, “Some divine fate, as it seems, or some revolution of events put a period that day to the freedom of Greece.”¹⁹ After the battle the disquieting oracles, to which Demosthenes had refused credence, were remembered. It was not difficult to see him as an individual cursed by fate, who had involved his fellow citizens in tragic catastrophe—an idea which Aeschines had emphasized in his attacks.²⁰ In the Oration on the Crown, however, Demosthenes, while admitting the tragic significance of the defeat, emphatically denies that his misfortune had precipitated disaster for Athens; rather, he asserts, “how much more just and truthful is it to consider that a fate common to all men, as it seems, or a certain hard and unexpected burden of troubles has been responsible for these miseries” (271). Demosthenes' role during the crisis was the only one a loyal Athenian could have played. His policy had been determined by the glorious precedents established by Athenian statesmen in the past (66-69). Throughout the speech he employs the modest metaphor of the obedient soldier in referring to his services as a statesman.²¹ Skilfully the orator changes the question from “Were Demosthenes' policies the cause of defeat?” to “Did Athens act properly in resisting Philip?” To the latter question he readily gives an affirmative answer (199-200):

I wish to make a rather startling assertion. … If coming events were clear to all, and all had seen them ahead of time, … yet not even then ought the city to have abandoned her purposes, if indeed she had regard for her reputation or her ancestors or for time to come. As it was, she simply seems to have failed to succeed, and that is the common lot of man, when Providence wills it.

(199-200)

Athens, not Demosthenes, is the main character in the conflict with Philip. But, more important, she is conceived as the tragic protagonist who can regret her fate but not her actions. In referring to the struggle with Philip, Demosthenes employs the imagery of tragedy. With Philip he associates natural elements to underscore his treachery and the swift, unexpected nature of his movements. Philip's capture of Elatea posed an immediate threat to Athens; and, had it not been for the resistance of the Thebans, he would have swept down upon the city “like a winter torrent.”²² Weather imagery is again employed when Demosthenes' policy made the danger of Philip's encroachments pass by “like a cloud” (188). Demosthenes hesitates to recall an incident before Philip's final and absolute victory, which has caused the past to vanish as though “obliterated … by a flood” (214). The association of Philip with natural elements reaches its high point in the following passage (194):

If the fateful thunderstorm in all its fury was too much not only for us but for all the rest of the Greeks as well, what were we to do? It is just as if one were to hold responsible for the shipwreck the owner who has taken every precaution, has provided his ship with everything he believes will ensure its safety; but then the ship encounters a storm and its tackling falters or is completely shattered. ‘But I was not the captain of the ship,’ he might say (just as I was not a general), ‘nor did I control fate; rather, fate controlled everything.’

Two ideas in this passage call for elaboration. The first is that Philip is portrayed in his role as the thunderstorm—an instrument of destiny over which human effort and wisdom have little control. Secondly, there is the unmistakable inclusion of the ship-of-state imagery, which figures prominently in Greek tragedy. Athens is depicted here as the ship; and Demosthenes, continuing the analogy, represents himself as the owner who had done everything to ensure the ship's safety. The ship-of-state imagery is echoed later in the oration, when Demosthenes declares that Aeschines by failing to demonstrate loyalty to Athens does not “ride at the same anchor with the people” (281). The portrayal of Athens as the ship and Philip as the storm vividly projects the struggle to cosmic proportions. Though Athens was destined to lose the war and her liberty, it remained within her power to preserve her dignity and to assert her moral choice—it is in the expression of this view that the language of Demosthenes reaches the heights of tragic poetry.²³

The success of the Oration on the Crown is all the more notable when it is realized that there was every reason for its failure. Legally the case lay almost entirely in Aeschines' favor; the proposal of a crown for Demosthenes was clearly contrary to the laws. Moreover, Demosthenes' policies, attacked relentlessly and vigorously by Aeschines, were extremely vulnerable primarily because they had led to defeat. Demosthenes overcame all of the difficulties by conveying to his fellow citizens his own tragic vision of Athens in her struggle with Philip. The ignominy was transformed into glory, the defeat became instead a moral triumph. Demosthenes caused his audience to see themselves as the heroes in the tragedy and therefore proudly to assume with him the responsibility for what had happened. It was for this reason that Aeschines was relegated to the realm of comedy. As one who opposed Demosthenes' policies, policies which Athens had adopted and pursued to the bitter end, Aeschines was alienated as the incongruous impostor, the alazôn of the comic stage.

Notes

1. Das literarische Porträt der Griechen (Berlin 1896) 572, 579. Admittedly, the distinction is not immediately obvious. In fact Bruns states in regard to Aeschines, “bewegt er sich ganz im Stil der demosthenischen Invektive” (578). However, he asserts, “für eine auf feinerer Beobachtung beruhende Herabwürdigung der Individualität des Gegners fehlte dem Demosthenes die Fähigkeit” and speaks of the “Zerrbilder seines Meidias und Aeschines” (572). Contrariwise, Aeschines “erweckt eine Vorstellung, an die man zu glauben vermag; dies ist kein Popanz wie die Gegner in den demosthenischen Reden, die alle aus Teufelei und Dummheit zu gleichen Theilen zusammengebraut sind” (579).

2. “Instances” include repeated occurrences of an epithet. Put in different, though less meaningful, terms, 27 out of 35 of the epithets are found in comedy. This tabulation includes words from comedy only if they are there used as epithets. In determining what is a pejorative epithet in comedy I consulted Albert Müller, “Die Schimpfwörter in der griechischen Komödie,” Philologus 72 (1913) 321-37. …

3. For the former see Clouds 448 and Birds 429. Of the latter there are eight instances in Aristophanes alone.

4. Much of the foregoing material stems directly from Friedrich Blass, Die attische Beredsamkeit (Leipzig 1893) 3.92-93, whose acute observation of the comic words in the speech prompted me to investigate further.

5. The prominent role of the belly in comedy need not be elaborated here. However, there is a remarkable parallel to Aeschines in the character of Heracles, who, as a member of the gods' embassy, readily accepts the conditions of Peisthetacrus in exchange for a banquet (Birds 1591-1605).

6. Goodwin, Demosthenes On the Crown (Cambridge 1901) 184, explains, “the band of players subsisted chiefly on the fruit which Aeschines, as their hired servant, collected from the neighbouring farms by begging, stealing, or buying, as he found most convenient.” If this interpretation is accepted, it is possible to see Aeschines in the comic rôle of the fruit-stealer. See Pickard-Cambridge, Dithyramb, Tragedy and Comedy (Oxford 1927) 230.

7. See 38, 41, 47, 49, 50, 138.

8. See Harold W. Miller, “Aristophanes and Medical Language,” TAPA 76 (1945) 74-84.

9. Pickard-Cambridge (above, note 7) 230. …

10. O. J. Todd, “… A Reconsideration,” CQ 32 (1938) 37: “Of course, the word [“third-rate actor”] in Demosthenes is derogatory … not because in itself it means ‘third-rate performer’ but because it lays stress on inferiority in rank, on the man's being in the lowest grade in the normal theatrical troupe of the times (at least so far as concerns performances outside of Athens), entailing an unmistakable implication as to the actor's ability.”

11. Implied in the term “ape” is the notion of pretense and unsuccessful imitation. See Aristophanes, Acharnians 120, and William C. McDermott, “The Ape in Greek Literature,” TAPA 66 (1935) 165-176. Aeschines only succeeded in aping tragedy.

12. Anonymous Life of Aeschines 7. The story was told by Demochares, the nephew of Demosthenes.

13. Bruns (above, note 1) 576, explains, “wir würden etwa sagen: Komödiantenkönig vom Vorstadttheater.”

14. Demosthenes lays heavy emphasis on the fact that Aeschines also had neglected his embassy. In return for Philip's bribes, Aeschines and his fellow ambassadors had delayed to administer the peace oaths for three months, although the matter required maximum promptness (30, 31). Otto Ribbeck, Alazon (Leipzig 1882) 6-7, notes that diplomats regularly are alazôn types in comedy.

15. See above, note 10, and Pickard-Cambridge (above, note 7) 270-71.

16. F. M. Cornford, The Origin of Attic Comedy (London 1914) 140-141, “He [alazôn] is essentially the unwelcome intruder who interrupts sacrifice, cooking, or feast, and claims an undeserved share in the fruits of victory.”

17. T. B. L. Webster, Art and Literature in Fourth Century Athens (London 1956) 47, “Some of the violence of Aristophanic comedy seems to have spilled over into political eloquence; but comedy also could still be political and it is not always easy to decide whether a comic poet is borrowing from an orator or an orator from a comic poet.”

18. This had in fact occurred in the trial concerning the embassy. Aeschines (2.9) pointed out that Demosthenes' description of him was self-contradictory. On the one hand, Demosthenes represented him as worthless and contemptible; on the other, he wished to have him considered as formidable a person as Alcibiades or Themistocles. In the Oration on the Crown Demosthenes himself seems to have been aware of the inconsistency (see 142).

19. Life of Demosthenes 29.1.

20. Aeschines 3.111, 114, 157, 158.

21. See 62, 173, 211, 300.

22. Similarly Philip's representative, Python, is described to the court as “rushing upon you with a flood of cloquence” (136).

23. Wilhelm Fox, Die Kranzrede des Demosthenes (Leipzig 1880) 53, compares the Oration on the Crown with heroic poetry: “Hier wie dort das Menschen und Völkerleben in seiner grossartigen Entwickelung mit hochinteressanten Conflicten und Kämpfen und tragischen Geschicken, aber alles im Zusammenhang mit dem Walten höherer Mächte, die nach unerforschlich Gesetzen das Schicksal bestimmen.