Aeschines

Born around 389 BCE to Atrometus and Glaucothea, Aeschines came of age after the Peloponnesian War, when fourth‑century Athens rebuilt its institutions and ambitions without empire. He worked as a scribe and actor—training that honed a resonant voice and command of stagecraft—before entering civic life as a soldier and minor official. His rise was meritocratic in a city where the Assembly and the people’s courts remained central to politics, and where eloquence could vault a man into prominence.

His career turns on Macedon’s ascent and Athens’s strained autonomy. Aeschines supported the Peace of Philocrates (346 BCE) and urged prudence after Philip II’s victory at Chaeronea (338), when Athenian hoplites were cut down and the old strategic calculus died on a single field. In 337 the city reaffirmed its anti‑tyranny law in stone at the Royal Stoa, a visible pledge amid fear of subversion. Against this backdrop, Aeschines brought his most famous case: Against Ctesiphon (330 BCE). He argued that crowning Demosthenes for public service violated decree laws and misled the city about the past decade’s policies. The trial took place in packed courts, with jurors weighing not only statutes but the meaning of defeat, alliances, and public honor. Demosthenes’ response, On the Crown, carried the day; Aeschines, failing to secure even one‑fifth of the votes, departed into exile and taught rhetoric in Rhodes.

Aeschines’ challenges were both strategic and personal. He fought an opponent—Demosthenes—whose thunder matched his own polish. He faced a public grieving lost supremacy and divided over whether to resist or accommodate Macedon. His strengths were clarity, legalism, and a performer’s poise; his weakness was being cast as the cautious man in an age that craved defiance. Yet he sincerely believed that laws—regular assemblies, decree procedures, review of officials—were the city’s last defense against panic and flattery.

His legacy lies in three surviving speeches that preserve fourth‑century law and politics with unusual vividness. They show a democracy still governed by Assembly and courts, even as kings loomed over it. The anti‑tyranny law’s re‑inscription, the memory of Chaeronea, and the theater of the courts frame his work. In the central question of this timeline, Aeschines represents the last generation attempting to use procedure to steer a battered polis. He lost key battles of persuasion, but his words testify that even under hegemony, Athenians argued their fate in public, by law, and in full voice.