Demosthenes, answered from the texts and cited to the page.
I never sold a policy. Gifts moved among public men in every Greek city and everyone who has stood in the Assembly knows it; the question that decides whether a man is bought is whether his advice ever changed hands with the money, and mine did not. I argued against Philip when it was unpopular, unprofitable, and dangerous, and I argued the same thing for twenty years, in seasons when agreeing with him would have paid very well.123
To prove, however, that what I am telling you is true (to the clerk) call me the witnesses from Olynthus. [The witnesses are called.'] H7 Now I should not wonder if he even dared to make some such statement as this — that the Peace which we were making could not have been made an honourable one, or such as I demanded, because our generals had mismanaged the war.The Public Orations, Vol 1, pp. 196–197
If the defendant Aeschines was not deliberately deceiving 102 you for a price, he must necessarily, I presume, have had one of two reasons for making the statements in question to you, in regard to the Phocians and Thespiae and Euboea.The Public Orations, Vol 1, pp. 184–185
But if he has stripped them all alike of their dignity, their paramountcy, and their independence--nay, even of their free constitutions,[n] wherever he could do so--can it be denied that the policy which you adopted on my advice was the most glorious policy possible? {66} But I return to my former point.The Public Orations, Vol 2
Contested. He was convicted over Harpalus in 324, fined fifty talents, imprisoned, escaped into exile, and was recalled within the year; he denied the charge to the end, and modern scholarship divides.