1In the first place, I beg of you, men of Athens, to hear my defense with kindness. I speak this not for my own sake alone, but for yours; that you may not be led by the prejudice of my accuser to prejudge my cause before you have heard it.
2I was not idle, nor was I negligent, when I saw Philip forging fetters for all the Greeks, as well as for us. I warned the people, I gave counsel, I exerted myself continually both in the Assembly and in the foreign embassies.
3And now, Aeschines, what ought the city to have done, when she saw Philip establishing an empire and a tyranny over all Greece? Or what should I, her counsellor, have said or proposed?
4I, who knew that from the earliest time until the day when I myself ascended the platform, my country had always striven for primacy and honour and glory, and had spent more in blood and money for the honour and benefit of all Greece than the rest of the Greeks had spent for themselves.
5Should I have counselled the abandonment of your dignity and your traditions, and bidden you take your place with the Thessalians and the Dolopes in helping Philip to acquire the dominion of Greece, and so overturn the honour and the just rights of the other Greeks?
6Or should I have counselled resistance? You chose rightly, men of Athens; and my counsel was in accord with the dignity of the state and with justice itself.
7It cannot be, it cannot be, men of Athens, that you did wrong when you took upon yourselves the battle for the freedom and the safety of all. No! By those who bore the brunt at Marathon, and those who stood in the ranks at Plataea.
8By those who fought in the sea-fights at Salamis and Artemisium, and by the many other brave men who lie in the public monuments — all of whom alike the city deemed worthy of the same honour and buried there, Aeschines, not only the successful and victorious.
9And justly! For the duty of brave men has been done by all; their fortune has been such as the deity assigned to each.
10But you, accursed scribbler, what have you ever done? You, who deserted your post and ran away from Chaeronea? And you now presume to insult me, and to bring me to trial for actions which deserve a crown?
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