Page:A History of Ancient Greek Literature.djvu/387

CTESIPHON. HARPALUS 363 refuse as a matter of personal honour, without seriously compromising his relations with the king. The Mace- donians insisted that Harpalus should be detained, and the treasure stored in the Parthenon in trust for Alexander. Demosthenes agreed to both proposals, and moved them in the Assembly himself. What happened next is not known, but Harpalus suddenly escaped, and the Macedonians insisted on having the treasure counted. It was found to be less than half the original sum. That it was going in secret preparations for war, they could have little doubt. They would have liked a state trial and some instant executions. Demosthenes managed to get the question entrusted to the Areopagus, and the report deferred. It had to come at last. The Areopagus made no statement of the uses to which the money was applied, but gave a list of the persons guilty of appropriating it, Demosthenes at the head. His intrigue had failed, and he had given the friends of Macedon their chance. He was prosecuted by Hyperides on the one side, Deinarchus on the other. The latter, a Corinthian by birth, rose into fame by this process, and nothing has survived of him except the three speeches relating to it. Dionysius calls him a 'barley Demosthenes,' whatever that may mean — the suggestion is probably ' beer ' as opposed to ' wine ' — and his tone in this speech is one of brutal exultation. Very different, suspiciously different, is Hyperides, who not only says nothing to make a permanent breach, but even calls attention to Demosthenes's great position, to the unsolved problem of what he meant to do with the money, to the possibility that his lips are in some w^ay sealed. For his own part, Hyperides talks frank treason with a coolness which well bears out the stories of his