[43]
I earnestly implore you to
consider what was the intention of the Athenians who did this thing, or what was
their proud claim. They proscribed as their enemy and the enemy of their allies,
disfranchising him and his family, a man of Zelea, one Arthmius, a slave of the
Great King （for Zelea is in Asia）, because in the service of his master he
conveyed gold, not to Athens but to
the Peloponnese.1
1 The occasion of this decree, to which Demosthenes refers in Dem. 19.271, is not known. According to Plut. Them. 6 it was Themistocles who proposed it; but a schol. on Aristides names Cimon. The date in the former case would be before 471; in the latter it would be after 457, and may be connected with the mission of Megabazus to Sparta in 455, mentioned by Thuc. 1.109.
Demosthenes. Demosthenes with an English translation by J. H. Vince, M.A. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1930.
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