Ghost on the Throne - James S. Romm [41]
The Bribery Scandal at Athens
Shortly after Demosthenes’ return from Olympia, Harpalus escaped from his guards and fled Athens. Who helped him escape, and why, are unclear; many stood to gain from the disappearance of the most wanted man on earth. No one was ever blamed or charged, so presumably all factions were content to see him go. But the money Harpalus left behind was a different matter. These seven hundred talents, stolen from Alexander’s treasury and seized by Athens as contraband, had been held in escrow for weeks, but when state officials went to examine the stash, they found only three hundred fifty. Athens went into full crisis mode. Charges and countercharges flew around the city, as politicians accused one another of pocketing the loot. And among those most sternly accused was Demosthenes.
The influence of money on politics had always been accepted, even joked about, as a fixture of Athenian democracy. One public speaker laughed at a poet who had won an award for reciting his verses, saying that he could earn ten times as much, from King Philip, for keeping quiet. But the missing half of Harpalus’ embezzled funds caused deep anxiety. This was money that belonged to Alexander; the Macedonians had already demanded it back; Athens’ fate, especially the question of control of Samos, lay in Alexander’s hands. Someone would have to pay the price for the money’s disappearance, and Demosthenes was among those selected. The man’s recent changes of stance, his sudden willingness to oppose revolt and support Alexander worship, the suspicious sore throat that he claimed prevented him from debating a provocative measure in the Assembly—all this evidence seemed to show that Demosthenes had been bribed.
Hyperides had reason to welcome the idea that his old friend and ally, more recently the turncoat who had abandoned him, might finally fall from grace. Hyperides’ fight for freedom from Macedon—once Demosthenes’ fight too—might flourish, along with his own political fortunes, if his great colleague was forced from the scene. So Hyperides joined those attacking Demosthenes as a liar and a taker of bribes. He made it clear to the public that he had split from his onetime partner, and they elected him to lead the prosecutorial team.
After a six-month investigation produced the expected indictments, including that of Demosthenes, Athens prepared to watch a thrilling spectacle of political blood sport. Hyperides, the second-greatest orator of the day, was about to turn all his rhetorical weapons on the greatest, his own lifelong friend.
“Don’t you dare talk to me of friendship,” Hyperides fumed in his speech (partly recovered from a tattered roll of papyrus that turned up in Egypt in 1847). “You yourself destroyed that friendship when you took money to oppose your country’s interests and changed sides. You made a laughingstock of yourself. You cast shame on those who, in former times, chose to go along with your policies. To think that together we might have been most glorious in the eyes of the people … But you have overturned all that.” Hyperides spared nothing in his caricature of Demosthenes’ venality. He reduced the man’s career to one long quest for bribes. Demosthenes had supported the Theban revolt, said Hyperides, only because he was bought and paid for by Persian gold. Then he had doomed that revolt to failure by pocketing money meant for Thebes.
The rhetorical jabs hit their mark. Demosthenes was convicted, along with only one other defendant, Demades, long notorious both for corruption and for aiding the Macedonians. It was a catastrophe for Demosthenes’ political career and a deep humiliation. The Athenians fined him fifty talents, a sum he would be unable to pay unless he revealed that he did in fact have Harpalus’ missing money. When he did not pay, he was imprisoned, but friends, and no doubt bribes, helped him get out of jail and into exile.
At about the same moment, word arrived from Babylon. Alexander had