SOURCE: An introduction to The Speeches of Aeschines, William Heinemann, 1919, pp. vii-xxiii.

In the following excerpt, Adams provides a biographical sketch of Aeschines, concentrating on his political career and his feud with Demosthenes.

The Life of Aeschines

Our knowledge of the family and life of Aeschines comes from his own speeches and those of Demosthenes. The brief biographies which have come down to us are late and untrustworthy. At the time of the speech On the Embassy we hear of Aeschines' father as an old man of ninety-four years. He was in the court-room, and Demosthenes, speaking to a jury some of whom, at least, were likely to know something of the family, and speaking subject to contradiction by Aeschines, whose plea was to follow his, makes no serious charge against Aeschines' family. He speaks contemptuously of the poverty of the schoolmaster-father (xix. 249) and sarcastically of the mother's...