made a great effort to crush his old rival. It had been proposed by Ctesiphon, in the year after Chæroneia, that a public testimonial to the worth of Demosthenes should be given him in the form of a golden crown; and that the honour should be proclaimed on the occasion of one of those great dramatic festivals, when the city was crowded with visitors from every part of Greece. The proposal had been approved by the Athenian Senate, but it had yet to be submitted to the popular assembly. Æschines at the time denounced it as unconstitutional, and opposed it by one of the recognised modes of legal procedure. Technically, indeed, the motion of Ctesiphon was illegal. Demosthenes, as we have stated, was holding two offices; he was superintendent of fortifications and treasurer of the Theoric fund. It was contrary to Athenian law to bestow the honour of a crown on an officer before his accounts had been audited; it was also forbidden that such an honour should be proclaimed anywhere else than in the Pnyx, the regular place of the people's assembly. According to the motion of the proposer, it would have been proclaimed in the theatre. Æschines could, therefore, argue that it was in two points illegal. But he wished to win a decisive victory; and he accordingly waited for some years, and finally rested his case on the argument that Demosthenes, as a public man, was undeserving of the honour. It is this which gives interest to his extant speech. He laboured to convince the Athenians that his rival could not have been thoroughly sincere in his anti-Macedonian professions, because he had let slip three
