Declamations 1–51 by Libanius of Antioch

Contents

1. Αʹ Declamation 1 (Apology of Socrates)

   A friend and long companion of Socrates takes the stand after Meletus, Anytus and Lycon and answers their charges at length, among them that Socrates misused Homer's lines on Odysseus and the common soldiers; the poet's tales, he replies, from Odysseus to the thefts of Autolycus, deserve the criticism. He closes by calling Crito and the sons of Leon of Salamis as witnesses and warning Anytus by the example of Callixenus, who convicted the generals and was ruined himself.

2. Βʹ Declamation 2 (Socrates Forbidden to Converse in Prison)

   After the verdict, Socrates' accusers want him barred from conversing in prison until he dies, and a speaker rises against the ban. Even the unlearned prisoner talks and reasons about death, he argues, and Croesus' dumb son found his voice at his father's ruin. Fearing that the ship may arrive today, he pleads for one more day of Socrates' talk and ends by asking Socrates to go on speaking even after the hemlock.

3. Γʹ Declamation 3 (Menelaus' Embassy to the Trojans for Helen)

   Menelaus addresses the Trojan assembly to demand the return of Helen. Since Homer calls Menelaus a man of few words and likens Odysseus' speech to falling snow, the opening note keeps this speech short and leaves the fuller argument to Odysseus. Paris can neither deny the abduction nor show it was just, Menelaus argues, and he calls Zeus, god of strangers, to witness that the Greeks were wronged first.

4. Δʹ Declamation 4 (Odysseus' Embassy to the Trojans for Helen)

   Odysseus rises after Menelaus before the Trojans, since some keep silent, some shout and some say the envoys should be killed. Introduced as a display of copious argument and long periods, the speech insists that the Greeks came not for cattle or land but over a just grievance, recalls that when Theseus carried off Helen, Attica was filled with war and Aphidnae sacked, and urges Paris himself to yield and be called the saviour of Troy.

5. Εʹ Declamation 5 (Achilles' Reply to Odysseus' Embassy at the Litai)

   Achilles answers Odysseus' embassy from the ninth book of the Iliad, beginning from the moment he saw the envoys at his door. Agamemnon's gifts, he argues, are a repayment rather than a gift, and to accept them would prove the insult deserved. He threatens to launch his ships, tells Agamemnon to face the Hector he has trained up and put out the fire himself, and points Odysseus to Idomeneus.

6. ϛʹ Declamation 6 (Orestes)

   After the fall of Troy and Agamemnon's murder, Orestes is tried for killing his mother and pleads that she was herself a murderer, in a speech its preface marks as tragic material. Granting for argument that Agamemnon wronged their daughter at Aulis, Orestes asks whether that licensed Clytemnestra's crimes, sets Penelope's chastity against hers, and ends with Electra weeping beside him and Pythian Apollo watching the trial.

7. Ζʹ Declamation 7

   Poseidon prosecutes Ares before the gods for killing his son Halirrhothius, who had fallen in love with Ares' daughter Alcippe. Even if punishment was owed, Poseidon argues, chains or the whip would have served, and a punisher who exceeds the measure does wrong himself. He tells how Alcippe wept over the body as over a bridegroom, and asks how a god with blood on his hands may share ambrosia when a man is barred from shrines.

8. Ηʹ Declamation 8

   Ares answers Poseidon's charge over the death of Halirrhothius, complaining that the gods have heard abuse rather than accusation. Alcippe, he says, lies on the ground fasting and weeping, and to be kept from marriage altogether is far worse than a wrong done to a married woman; he refuses to let the power of Eros excuse the young man. He ends by charging Poseidon with slandering Alcippe herself.

9. Θʹ Declamation 9

   Neocles goes to court after Salamis to take back Themistocles, the son he had cast out, and Themistocles refuses. Neocles argues that his harshness was the correction every father, lawgiver and god applies, and that the son's success grew from it. He ends by recalling the boy's infancy and first lessons, bidding Themistocles come home and sail from his father's house if he takes the war to Asia, and wishing the mother were still alive.

10. Ιʹ Declamation 10

    Themistocles replies to his father Neocles, who wants him back after Salamis. Let Neocles be called the gentlest of fathers, he says, but leave the son as he was cast out; the lawgiver who allowed disinheritance knew what he was doing. He wants no money, since his name has reached Susa, and he names his true father: the Athenian people, who chose the sea over their land and won the land back by sea.

11. ΙΑʹ Declamation 11

    Young and untried, Cimon comes from the prison where Miltiades lies sick and bound, and asks the Athenians to imprison him in his father's place. The victor of Marathon is in chains because he cannot pay his fine, having spent on the city's arms, and the city loses nothing by the exchange. He closes with an appeal to the Athenian altar of Mercy and to Heracles and Pan, who fought in Miltiades' army.

12. ΙΒʹ Declamation 12

    Timon the hater of men, in love with Alcibiades, wants to die and says so before the council. The preface admits the difficulty of playing two opposed characters at once. Timon pictures Alcibiades' revels as a Dionysiac procession with Socrates as his Silenus, mocks his Alcmaeonid pride, and closes by urging him to carry war to every people, like Homer's Strife, and handing him the name of misanthrope.

13. ΙΓʹ Declamation 13

    Besieged by Athens, the Potidaeans have eaten one another, and the Corinthians, whose colony Potidaea was, accuse the Athenians of impiety before the Greeks. The speaker calls on the Sun, Day, Night and Apollo, whose oracle sent the colony out, and says Athens now raises altars to Inhumanity and Cruelty in place of Mercy. It ends with the Athenians entering the town after those meals and feasting there as for a victory.

14. ΙΔʹ Declamation 14

    The law leaves a tyrant unburied and rewards his killer; Callaeschrus, who killed his own son Critias while Critias ruled as tyrant, asks as his reward leave to bury him. Even wild beasts die for their young and mourn them, he pleads, and the dead body can be parted from the crimes. He asks only for an unmarked grave and warns Critias of what awaits below: Cocytus, Pyriphlegethon, Tantalus, Sisyphus, Ixion and Tityus.

15. ΙΕʹ Declamation 15

    A law sets a prize for a good life, and Cephalus and Aristophon contend for it. Cephalus speaks first: he has never stood trial, while his rival's many acquittals only show how often he was in danger, and rumour speaks of collusive prosecutions and bought witnesses. He asks whether Athens wants cautious statesmen or rash improvisers, and refuses to beg, since the question is honour, not pity.

16. Ιϛʹ Declamation 16

    Aristophon replies to Cephalus in the contest for the prize of a good life. He has won every trial brought against him, and calls Cephalus a jealous slanderer of the prize; a man who has never faced an audit, he argues, has given no account of his life. He ends with the trials of gods and heroes as precedent: Ares, the Eumenides beaten by Orestes, Heracles under Eurystheus, and Athena awarded Attica by Cecrops' vote.

17. ΙΖʹ Declamation 17

    Aeschines, sent alone as Athens' delegate to the Amphictyonic council, did not oppose Philip's admission, and on his return is prosecuted for public wrongs. Having opened Thermopylae to Philip and given up the Phocians, the accuser charges, he has now made the Macedonian a member of the ancient league, whose seats belonged to named peoples. Why, he asks, did a people that had Demosthenes send Aeschines?

18. ΙΗʹ Declamation 18

    Demosthenes has been convicted of falsely claiming citizenship, for which the law prescribes sale, and Philip has sent to buy him. Demades proposes to hand him over; Hyperides, who speaks here, proposes that he become a public slave of Athens instead. Hyperides sets Demosthenes' stolen descent beside Philip's stolen power, and closes with two precedents of servitude: Heracles a slave to Eurystheus, and Apollo, the ancestral god Demosthenes knows well, a servant to mortals.

19. ΙΘʹ Declamation 19

    After Chaeronea Philip demands Demosthenes, and the people ask five days to consider; Demosthenes asks for hemlock at once. His death spares the assembly days of debate in which Philip's friends would call him the warmonger, and gives the envoys the news their master would most like. He ends with a message for them: they hoped to lead him in chains through Eleusis, Plataea, Thebes, Phocis, Thermopylae and Larisa, and go home empty-handed.

20. Κʹ Declamation 20

    In a second version of the theme, Demosthenes uses the five days the people asked of Philip after Chaeronea to ask for death, since he could not fall in the battle, and for burial in Athens for his services. He prosecutes himself as a coward who should have died before Phocis, Olynthus and Euboea fell, and closes by imagining his contest in Hades with Theseus, Miltiades, Themistocles and Aristides over their deeds.

21. ΚΑʹ Declamation 21

    Philip offers to return two thousand Athenian prisoners from Chaeronea if he receives Demosthenes, and Demosthenes asks to be handed over. Having stopped Antiphon burning the dockyards and outargued Python of Byzantium, he refuses to abandon his old goodwill now. He takes comfort that Philip values him above two thousand Athenians, and leaves with a petition to Apollo, Athena, Demeter, the Maiden and Iacchus that the exchange be honest.

22. ΚΒʹ Declamation 22

    Demanded by Philip, Demosthenes fled to the altar of Mercy, was dragged away and handed over; released by Philip, he now proposes that Athens abolish the altar. Surrendered by those he hoped would save him and saved by the enemy he always opposed, he guesses at Philip's motives and cites his release of Apollophanes' daughters to the comic actor Satyrus. He bids farewell to the platform and the council: this harbour is closed.

23. ΚΓʹ Declamation 23

    Handed over to Philip and released, Demosthenes keeps out of public life and is prosecuted for his silence. Surrendered by his own people and now Philip's slave, he replies, he has no share in the city's affairs. Everything is lost, from Thermopylae to the Chersonese and Demosthenes himself, so he resolves to keep quiet and live under Fortune, unless a common danger to Greece forces out his voice, and then he goes to Thebes to act.

24. ΚΔʹ Declamation 24

    Spartan law bars men under thirty from addressing the assembly. After Leuctra, when Thebes threatens war unless Messene is freed, the young Archidamus persuades Sparta to fight; the enemy is routed, and he is indicted for breaking the law. Good counsel depends on judgement, not age, its introduction holds, and Archidamus argues that Lycurgus' law was made for times of leisure, not for danger at the gates.

25. ΚΕʹ Declamation 25

    Corinth expelled the courtesan Lais for corrupting its young men; when adultery then spread and many died under the law against it, a proposal came to bring her back. Speaking against the recall, the orator accuses the proposer of loving her, warns the city not to undo a good decree, and puts the vote as a choice between licence and good name, cast before a city that is the common market of Greece.

26. Κϛʹ Declamation 26

    A morose man married to a talkative wife petitions the council for leave to die, and begs them not to let clever orators drag out the debate. He tells how her flood of words has swamped him until he is dizzy. At the end he fears meeting her again in Hades, where the dead are said to hold trials and debates, and asks the gods that she may live to extreme old age.

27. ΚΖʹ Declamation 27

    His son laughed when he slipped and fell, and now a morose father disowns the young man before the council. He resents a law that makes strangers judges of his household, and argues that laughter is no mark of man, since people never see anything good to laugh at. On his farm, he says, he wants no one near him, or at most someone as squalid and sullen as himself.

28. ΚΗʹ Declamation 28

    Invited to dinner, a parasite borrowed a racehorse to arrive sooner; the horse took the altar before the door for the turning-post, wheeled round it and carried him off, and he went without dinner. The next day, faint with hunger, he asks for death. He describes the ride, cites the Odyssey on starving as the most pitiable death, and asks for daily libations at his tomb and no horse near it.

29. ΚΘʹ Declamation 29

    A parasite whose patron has turned philosopher, and now practises hunger, pleads with the council to let him drink hemlock. He recalls the old life of plenty, wine among roses in spring and long summer dinners, and pleads that he has no parents, kin or friends left, no craft, and a body ruined by luxury. Rather than a long decline, he asks for a quick end.

30. Λʹ Declamation 30

    An envious man, whose neighbour, as poor as he was, has suddenly grown rich, begs for the poison the law grants to the wretched. He could bear the loss of his children, his limbs or his sight, he claims, if only the neighbour stayed poor. He tells the neighbour to drink and dance on his grave if he likes, but to spend on choruses and warships, or face confiscation: the one thing in democracy he praises.

31. ΛΑʹ Declamation 31

    Made to pay the city the thousand drachmas the law demands of every finder of treasure, though his own find came to only five hundred, a miser asks the council for hemlock. Speaking in his own person, he tells how a talkative slave let the find slip and an official came to collect, and he ends with a farewell to his household and wife, consoled that the dead pay no taxes.

32. ΛΒʹ Declamation 32

    A miser who has fallen for a courtesan and is asked for her fee denounces himself: torn between his gold and the woman, he would rather the council grant him poison than hang himself at her door and risk the fine. He recounts how dining at friends' tables taught him a taste for delicacies, and closes lamenting that strangers are bound to plunder his fortune once he is dead.

33. ΛΓʹ Declamation 33

    Honoured for valour, a miser's son chose as his reward a crown of olive instead of money, and his father disowns him. The father speaks, mocking the young man's cleverness in reading the law of disinheritance and arguing that even the gods love gold. His parting advice: win the prize again and ask for gold if he wants the quarrel ended.

34. ΛΔʹ Declamation 34

    A son vowed a talent to Asclepius if his sick father recovered; the father, a miser, recovered and disowns him. Speaking in character, the father complains that his son bought him health at the price of poverty and that the gods, it seems, sell recovery for cash. He sends the young man off to Asclepius, his father now, to live on the talent.

35. ΛΕʹ Declamation 35

    In a famine a rich man offered to feed the city if it handed over his enemy; the people refused, and the enemy now asks the council for leave to die under the law that allows it. He thanks the people, charges the rich man with speaking like a tyrant in a democracy, and entrusts his sons to the council so that they may one day stand against the rich man's children.

36. Λϛʹ Declamation 36

    A rich man, besieged with his city in a famine, promised victory if his political enemy, a poor orator, had his tongue cut out; the city agreed and he drove off the enemy, but when the mute orator wept at the rich man's speech, the people stoned the rich man. A fellow speaker defends the orator against a charge of riot, arguing that tears are no crime, and ends by urging him to serve the city in writing.

37. ΛΖʹ Declamation 37

    A rich citizen thrice honoured for valour asked first for the return of the exiles, then for the restoration of the disenfranchised, then for the release of prisoners, and an orator has now charged him with aiming at tyranny. He makes his own defence, setting his campaigns and his motives against the accuser's envy, and asks the jurors whether they are kin of the men he freed or of those his victories saved.

38. ΛΗʹ Declamation 38

    Rumour linked a rich man with a poor man's wife; the poor man proposed a law letting husbands kill adulterers without trial, the rich man had it struck down, and the poor man now prosecutes him for adultery. The prosecutor reads that opposition as a confession, rejects the plea of envy, and asks why the defendant is not ashamed before the wealthy friends pleading for him, who spend as much yet keep their self-control and came only because his tears compelled them.

39. ΛΘʹ Declamation 39

    Rumoured to be sleeping with his son's wife, a father carried a law allowing fathers to kill their sons untried; the son answers with a law allowing husbands to kill adulterers untried. Speaking for his own measure, he turns the father's arguments back on him, pressing that not even a slave may be put to death unheard, and promises to go armed and call on his father's help if an adulterer appears.

40. Μʹ Declamation 40

    A husband tested his own wife in the guise of a stranger and convicted her of adultery, keeping her dowry; her father, to avoid disgrace, paid another, and the trick was repeated until the father killed them both. Admitting his misfortune but denying any guilt, the father blames the son-in-law for the whole scheme and warns that a conviction would leave such husbands free to defraud their in-laws.

41. ΜΑʹ Declamation 41

    Plague holds the city, and an oracle demands the sacrifice of a citizen's child; the lot falls on a magician's son, and the magician offers to end the plague himself if the boy is spared. The speaker urges the assembly to obey the Pythian god, mocks the magician's claims and his dealings with merchants for money, and ends by reminding him that his craft can still summon the dead boy's ghost.

42. ΜΒʹ Declamation 42

    A tyrant threatened war unless a neighbouring city gave up a handsome youth; the city chose war, and during the siege the boy's father killed him and threw the body from the wall. Tried for murder once the tyrant has withdrawn, the father argues that his act saved the city, its temples and its families, and recalls his son's last words urging him not to delay.

43. ΜΓʹ Declamation 43

    A woman who killed her husband, the tyrant, asks for their children as her reward: one law condemns a tyrant's children to die with him, another grants a tyrant-slayer whatever reward is asked. Pleading for her, a speaker weighs the two laws, narrates how she took up the sword against him, and urges her to raise the children as democrats, the sword kept before their eyes.

44. ΜΔʹ Declamation 44

    By law the general must put to death any foreigner seen in the assembly; one such man claimed, as he was led away, to have a secret to reveal, but was killed; the city later fell to a tyrant, and after the tyranny the general is tried as an accomplice. He answers that a wish to use him proves nothing, and in farewell urges his successors to keep the laws and close the assembly to foreigners.

45. ΜΕʹ Declamation 45

    Of seven judges two voted for death, two for disenfranchisement and three for exile, and the law says the majority prevails; the condemned man claims exile. Its preface cites Demosthenes for a condemned man who speaks for himself. He then argues that the votes must be counted as cast, not combined against him, and bids his fellow citizens farewell.

46. Μϛʹ Declamation 46

    A married son, still under his father's authority, was taken by brigands abroad and his father refused the ransom; his wife sold her property to free him, was shipwrecked, and her body washed up where he was held, and his tears moved the captors to release him. Now disowned for refusing to remarry, he promises obedience to his father in everything but this, in a speech whose author excuses it as written in haste.

47. ΜΖʹ Declamation 47

    A father hostile to one of his two sons fell ill and ordered the other to write himself in as sole heir; the son wrote in his brother as well. Recovered, the father disowns him. The son defends his pity for his brother, recalls their childhood refuge with their mother, and ends by calling the brother to clasp the father's knees, since the father's hatred has now passed to himself.

48. ΜΗʹ Declamation 48

    A son honoured for valour asked as his reward that his disowned brother be taken back; the father opposed it and the request failed, so the son now asks to be disowned as well. He argues that he cannot live in comfort while his brother is in poverty, urges other brave men not to lose heart at his example, and tells his father to feast with flatterers as his heirs.

49. ΜΘʹ Declamation 49

    Having saved his father from a fire, a son failed to save his mother and lost his sight. The stepmother showed the father poison tied in the son's clothes, and a new testament cut him out; one night the father was found murdered beside the son's sword, the stepmother asleep at his side, and the blind son on his own threshold. After a preface on the order of defence and accusation, the blind son speaks, warning never to trust a stepmother.

50. Νʹ Declamation 50

    Accused by his own father of plotting against his life, a son asks to be put to death without trial rather than defend himself. He argues that silence would be taken as a confession and that any defence would mean calling his father a slanderer. He asks to lie in an unmarked grave or be left unburied, warns his age-mates, and tells his father to prosecute him before the judges in Hades.

51. ΝΑʹ Declamation 51

    A short lament by a man who has fallen from wealth to penury in a single day. Once a miser who lived on black bread and well water and scorned the finery of the rich, he hid his gold in the ground for fear of thieves and has lost it all. He weighs consulting an oracle or seers, who would want fees, and resolves on the noose or hemlock unless someone brings him the water of Lethe.