Scholia on Demosthenes by Demosthenes Scholia

Contents

1. Ὀλυνθιακὸς Αʹ Olynthiac 1

   The proem's oblique praise of the Assembly opens these notes on the First Olynthiac, with the remark that Demosthenes, like Thucydides, meets objections at the very start, and that he quietly prepares his hearers to think little of the festival fund. Later notes read his hurried list of Pydna and Potidaea as a way of not making Philip seem great. The last notes take the speech's closing petition and the poetic spelling of heineka.

2. Ὀλυνθιακὸς Βʹ Olynthiac 2

   Which Olynthiac came first is the opening question: Dionysius puts this speech first, Caecilius objects, and the scholiast argues from Demosthenes' own words that the First Olynthiac precedes it. The notes on the Second Olynthiac treat its single head, what Athens is able to do, and its case that Philip grew by injustice and has the gods against him. Among the last notes are the rich, the festival fund and a veiled hit at Eubulus.

3. Ὀλυνθιακὸς Γʹ Olynthiac 3

   The plan of the Third Olynthiac is set out in three parts: whether the force should move to Macedonia or stay to help Olynthus, whether the laws on the festival fund should be repealed, and an attack on the present leaders of the people. Against the word barbarian, one note objects that Philip was a Greek of Argive descent from Heracles, who enrolled the young Alexander in a tribe at Argos. Near the end come Chares' mercenaries and the city's old place at the head of Greece.

4. Κατὰ Φιλίππου Αʹ Philippic 1

   Why a deliberative speech should be headed against Philip is the first problem here: the three kinds of oratory mix, and in the First Philippic Philip is the material and the Athenians the point at issue. The scholiast lists its heads, vigorous action, citizens serving in person and funds for the soldiers' rations, and sets the speech after the loss of the Chalcidian towns. A note on irony cites the Christian sophist Julian.

5. Περὶ τῆς εἰρήνης On the Peace

   Philip's claim to a seat among the Amphictyons after the destruction of the Phocians is the setting given in the argument of On the Peace, with an account of the Amphictyony as the common court of the Greeks and a defence of the speech against those who doubted it was Demosthenes'. Later notes distinguish actors from poets and recall the Theban razing of Thespiae and Plataea, and explain the names of Cardia, from the heart a raven snatched from a sacrifice, and of Byzantium, from its founder Byzas.

6. Κατὰ Φιλίππου Βʹ Philippic 2

   Brief notes on the Second Philippic mark its rebuking proem and where its conclusion falls, and deny that a second proem follows. Most of the history concerns Thebes: the detaching of Messene from Sparta after Leuctra, Philip's gift of Orchomenus and Coronea to the Thebans, Thessaly's cavalry and Thebes' hoplites, and Elatea. Late in the speech come Demosthenes' embassy to Messene and Argos, Nicaea and Magnesia, and the Attic habit of piling negatives.

7. Περὶ Ἁλοννήσου On Halonnesus

   Halonnesus, an island seized by the pirate Sostratus, and Philip's letter about it frame these notes on On Halonnesus, which advise reading the indignant proem heavily and recall how the Athenians once put to death the envoys of Darius and Xerxes. They explain ship-sheds, Philocrates' decree that each side keep what it held, and the orator Python. Towards the end come the bounds of the Chersonese, the towns Pteleum and Leuce, and Callippus of Paeania.

8. Περὶ τῶν ἐν Χερρονήσῳ On the Chersonese

   Whether On the Chersonese is a forensic or a deliberative speech opens the notes, which side with Epiphanius in calling it deliberative, since neither Diopeithes nor Philip stood trial. The scholiast makes Diopeithes the father of the comic poet Menander, a friend of Demosthenes. Short glosses follow on cleruchs, figures of speech and Philip's tyrants in Euboea, Cleitarchus at Eretria and Philistides at Oreus, and among the last notes are Potidaea, renamed Cassandreia, and the Aleuadae as Thessaly's tyrants.

9. Κατὰ Φιλίππου Γʹ Philippic 3

   Three successive proems are found at the start of the Third Philippic, and the notes follow the turn to the argument from advantage, naming figure after figure. Place-names draw small histories: Porthmus, the port of Eretria; Naupactus, where the Heraclidae built their ships; Echinus, named after one of the Sown Men. One scholiast adds that the same corruption has ruined the affairs of the Romans, and near the end comes the bronze pillar on which the punishment of traitors was published, with a note on Euphraeus.

10. Κατὰ Φιλίππου Δʹ Philippic 4

    Against earlier commentators, the scholiast argues that the Fourth Philippic answers sudden bad news from Thrace, where Philip was helping Cardia against Diopeithes, and so borrows much from the speeches before it. The notes follow its answers to the objection that the measures are costly and hard. Near the end two asterisks mark a passage the scholiast assigns to On the Chersonese, and glosses explain the suit for ill-treating parents and the traitor Aristomedes.

11. Πρὸς τὴν ἐπιστολὴν τὴν Φιλίππου Reply to Philip's Letter

    Philip's siege of Selymbria, his seizure of the Athenian grain ships and the letter in which he blamed Athens for breaking the peace give the occasion of the Reply to Philip's Letter. The scholiast reads it as a harangue to an army more than a speech to the Assembly, built on justice, advantage and what Athens can do, with fortune shown to favour the city. Glosses near the end place Perinthus, later called Heraclea, beside Byzantium, and Nicaea at Thermopylae.

12. Ἐπιστολὴ Φιλίππου Philip's Letter

    Diopeithes' capture of Crobyle and Tiristasis, as Philip's Letter tells it, draws the one note on the letter: the scholiast, taking tiristasin for a common noun, suggests that it means peristasin.

13. Περὶ συντάξεως On Organization

    The scholiast dates On Organization before the Philippics, when the allies had already revolted and Rhodes was under oligarchs, and reads it as a proposal: Eubulus' motion to turn the military money into festival money has carried, so Demosthenes asks that receiving be joined to doing what is needed. The notes weigh his plan against the two obols of the distributions, and among their last glosses are the Opisthodomus treasury, the Thessalian penestae, likened to Spartan helots, and a borrowing from the Third Olynthiac.

14. Περὶ τῶν συμμοριῶν On the Symmories

    With the Athenians convinced that the Persian king was about to march on Greece, these notes explain, Demosthenes in On the Symmories seems to go along with them while holding them back: prepare, but do not move without the Greeks. The device is compared with Archidamus' first speech in Thucydides and set against Nicias' opposite one. The notes then lay out his plan to raise the twelve hundred to two thousand, and gloss heiresses and the Persian's thousand camels of money.

15. Ὑπὲρ τῆς Ῥοδίων ἐλευθερίας For the Liberty of the Rhodians

    After the war of the allies, the scholiast relates, Artemisia with the king's approval backed the rich of Rhodes against the people, who fled to Athens for help. The notes on For the Liberty of the Rhodians show Demosthenes facing two difficulties, Athenian anger at Rhodes and fear of the king, disowning any tie to the Rhodians and shifting the blame from their people to their rich. They end where the epilogue turns on the bribe-takers.

16. Ὑπὲρ Μεγαλοπολιτῶν For the Megalopolitans

    Megalopolis, founded by the Arcadians as a base against Laconia, appealed to Athens when Sparta marched on it while Thebes was busy with the Phocian war, and Spartan envoys came too. The notes on For the Megalopolitans show how Demosthenes wins the Arcadians without offending Sparta or strengthening Thebes, and follow his answers to the charge of faithlessness, taking in the pillars of the Arcadian alliance with Thebes.

17. Περὶ τῶν πρὸς Ἀλέξανδρον συνθηκῶν On the Treaty with Alexander

    Some ascribe On the Treaty with Alexander to Hyperides, the scholiast reports, and others give it, with the seventh Philippic on Halonnesus, to Hegesippus called Crobylus, faulting its slack openings, its want of Demosthenic force and its vocabulary. The notes trace the argument that the treaty is already broken, from the sons of Philiades at Messene and the tyrants of Lesbos and on to the Macedonian request to build small boats, which would soon have become triremes.

18. Ὑπὲρ Κτησιφῶντος περὶ τοῦ στεφάνου On the Crown (For Ctesiphon)

    The opening petition of On the Crown, to all the gods and goddesses, is read as a bid for goodwill modelled on a line of Homer. The notes follow Demosthenes' answer to Aeschines on the war with Philip, including the ships Philip seized and later returned, and observe how he evades the charge because Philip's letter never named him. Late glosses treat Aeschines as a schoolteacher, the funeral feast and a proverb about riding at anchor.

19. Περὶ τῆς παραπρεσβείας On the False Embassy

    Aeschines denies everything, so the case is one of conjecture, the notes on On the False Embassy begin, and its proem strikes at once at his supporters, above all Eubulus, Demosthenes' enemy since the affair of Aristarchus. Later notes identify the envoy Iatrocles and Phrynon, whom the scholiast makes Philip's kinsman through his son. Two of the last notes recall Aeschines playing the Thyestes on the stage and grovelling before Philip like a runaway slave.

20. Πρὸς Λεπτίνην Against Leptines

    As a second speech, the scholiast explains, Against Leptines needs only a short proem, which names the heads of advantage and justice and speaks for the son of Chabrias without naming him. A long historical note tells of Arginusae, the sentence on the generals and Conon's flight to Evagoras of Cyprus, who made him a friend of the Persian king. The last note turns on coinage: if debasing money is a capital crime, debasing the laws deserves no less.

21. Κατὰ Μειδίου Against Meidias

    Meidias' outrage at the Dionysia is the matter of these notes on Against Meidias, which open with Hermogenes on proems drawn from the character of the accused and derive aselgeia from Selge, a city whose people were all just. In the digression the scholiast sets the charges of desertion and of homicide beside the festival assault, with the rumour that Aristarchus killed Nicodemus at Demosthenes' prompting. The last notes concern the appeal to the laws and why the god is named at the end of the speech.

22. Κατὰ Ἀνδροτίωνος Against Androtion

    Against Androtion, a second speech delivered by Diodorus after Euctemon, is said here to be shaped for a pupil of Isocrates, with its balanced clauses and like endings. The notes divide it between the legal case, the council's crown and the triremes it never built, and the matters outside it: Androtion's collection of arrears, the melting of crowns and the making of procession vessels. Late glosses explain the stands on which the crowns rested, the Parthenon, and Timocrates as Androtion's supporter in court.

23. Κατὰ Ἀριστοκράτους Against Aristocrates

    Euthycles' indictment, in Against Aristocrates, of the decree protecting Charidemus is set against On the Crown: there Ctesiphon claims a gift is deserved, here it is refused. The notes list ten laws broken, seven on homicide and three on public life, explain how a divided Thrace would leave Cersobleptes unchecked, and expose the quibble that a council's decree lapses after a year. Late notes recall the Aeginetans and the ships Charidemus took, and mark the recapitulation of the legal case.

24. Κατὰ Τιμοκράτους Against Timocrates

    Mausolus of Caria's designs on Chios, Rhodes and Cos, and the Naucratite ship seized by the envoys Androtion, Glaucetes and Melanopus, give the background to Against Timocrates in these notes. They separate the conjecture over why Timocrates proposed his law from the legal case against it, and follow the argument point by point through its clauses on sureties and imprisonment. Towards the end they take up the comparison between corrupting the laws and corrupting the coinage.

25. Κατὰ Ἀριστογείτονος Αʹ Against Aristogeiton 1

    Definition is the issue in the first speech Against Aristogeiton, these notes begin, and they gloss its names for the last and first days of the month and its picture of the informer as a huckster selling his charges. A run of legal notes explains the patron of the metic woman Zobia, the suit against freedmen who desert their former master, boundary stones on mortgaged land, and the procedures of phasis, apagōgē and endeixis. The last person named is Theoris, glossed as a seer.

26. Κατὰ Ἀριστογείτονος Βʹ Against Aristogeiton 2

    Whether Aristogeiton is epitimos is the first matter glossed on the second speech Against Aristogeiton: the word is explained as a citizen in full rights and free of liability. The few other notes gloss to timōrēsomenon and mark passages on the councillor, the judge and the lawgiver.

27. Κατὰ Ἀφόβου Against Aphobus (Kata Aphobou)

    Two glosses survive on the first speech Against Aphobus, Demosthenes' suit against his guardian: epipla, in the inventory of his father's estate, is explained as the furnishings of a house, property that lies on the surface, and the guardians' epithet tois aplēstotatois is completed with ousin.

28. Πρὸς Ἄφοβον Against Aphobus (Pros Aphobon)

    Beside the words 'I shall begin from here' in the third speech Against Aphobus, Demosthenes' defence of his witness Phanus, a reader notes that the Theologian, Gregory of Nazianzus, uses the same phrase. The only other note explains that a witness could be compelled to swear disclaimer even over matters they did not know.

29. Πρὸς Ὀνήτορα Αʹ Against Onetor 1

    A small storage jar, pithaknē, is the one word explained in the scholia on the first speech Against Onetor.

30. Πρὸς Ζηνόθεμιν Against Zenothemis

    On Against Zenothemis a reader has left marks rather than commentary: they flag the uses of epratte and prosēkein, point to many more such marks nearby, and note one construction as Homeric.

31. Πρὸς Ἀπατούριον Against Apaturius

    A single note is all that survives on Against Apaturius, a private speech arising from a dispute between men in the sea trade. It explains which lawsuits the speech calls monthly suits: those over commercial contracts and those over eranos loans.

32. Πρὸς Φορμίωνα Against Phormio

    The words "for you consider such men" are the one passage of Against Phormio, a speech in a dispute over a maritime loan, that the scholia mark, calling them an epicrisis.

33. Πρὸς Λάκριτον Against Lacritus

    For Against Lacritus, a suit over a maritime loan, the scholiast explains a single word of shipping: the participle diopteuōn, keeping a close watch over the business of the ship, as a diopos would.

34. Πρὸς Πανταίνετον Against Pantaenetus

    Two brief notes on Against Pantaenetus deal with money and the calendar. The first reckons the talent of the loan, the share lent by Euergus beside the speaker's own, as sixty minae and gives the mina as forty staters; the second sets the Attic month Elaphebolion against September.

35. Πρὸς Ναυσίμαχον Against Nausimachus

    The sons of a guardian answer his former wards in Against Nausimachus, pleading that a claim once released cannot be brought again. The scholia gloss one word in it, aidesētai, with peisthēi.

36. Πρὸς Βοιωτὸν Βʹ Against Boeotus 2

    In the second speech Against Boeotus, over a mother's dowry, a grammatical note observes that hyper stands for kata, "against you", and supports the usage with Homer's hothʼ hyper sethen.

37. Κατὰ Στεφάνου Βʹ Against Stephanus 2

    On the phrase en malthēi in the second speech Against Stephanus, a prosecution for false witness, the scholiast explains malthē as softened wax.

38. Κατὰ Κόνωνος Against Conon

    Ariston's prosecution of Conon for assault draws three notes. The first sorts proems by their four sources, the speaker, the opponent, the jurors and the matter, citing this speech, Against Meidias, Isocrates' Plataicus and Lycurgus' Against Autolycus. The second records that Hermogenes called the narrative simple, since strong facts need no strong words; the third places the Leocorion, the monument of the daughters of Leos, in the middle of the Ceramicus.

39. Πρὸς Καλλικλέα Against Callicles

    Rainwater flooding a farm is at issue in Against Callicles, a dispute between neighbours, and the one gloss on it explains the rare word chlēdon as a great mass of silt.

40. Πρὸς Εὐβουλίδην Against Eubulides

    Euxitheus' appeal against his removal from the roll of his deme draws a handful of short notes. One marks as an epicrisis his plea in the proem to be heard with more goodwill than his accuser; another notes that "I shall begin from here" is also a phrase of the Theologian, as Byzantine readers called Gregory of Nazianzus; and three gloss words of the family narrative: tēthē as grandmother, etittheusen as nursed, ēria as tombs.

41. Κατὰ Θεοκρίνου Against Theocrines

    The suit called agraphiou is defined in the one note on Against Theocrines: an action against those entered on the register of public debtors whose names were erased before they had paid.

42. Κατὰ Νεαίρας Against Neaera

    The prosecution of Neaera opens with a classification: its issue is conjectural, a dispute over what was done rather than over how to name or judge it. The scholiast names Theomnestus as speaker and records that some reject the speech as spurious. Later notes explain summons witnesses and the fine of a thousand drachmas on a witness who fails to testify, place Colias on the Attic coast, and comment on shameless prostitution and on the construction of epibouleusas.

43. Ἐπιτάφιος Funeral Oration

    The notes on the Funeral Oration concern its opening. They class the proem as one drawn from an assumption, since goodwill towards those who served the city is taken as agreed, observe that its general statements are there to win credit for the speaker who praises, and take "those who have spoken here before" as meaning Lysias, who, the scholiast says, had written a funeral speech of his own.