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The statements as to his parentage and early life are conflicting; but it seems probable that his parents, though poor, were respectable. After assisting his father in his school, he tried his hand at acting with indifferent success, served with distinction in the army, and held several clerkships, amongst them the office of clerk to the Boule. The fall of Olynthus ( 348) brought Aeschines into the political arena, and he was sent on an embassy to rouse the Peloponnesus against Philip of Macedon.

In 347 he was a member of the peace embassy to Philip, who seems to have won him over entirely to his side. His dilatoriness during the second embassy (346) sent to ratify the terms of peace led to his accusation by Demosthenes and Timarchus on a charge of high treason, but he was acquitted as the result of a powerful speech, in which he showed that his accuser Timarchus had, by his immoral conduct, forfeited the right to speak before the people.

In 343 the attack was renewed by Demosthenes in his speech On the False Embassy, Aeschines replied in a speech with the same title and was again acquitted. In 339, as one of the Athenian deputies (pylagorae) in the Amphictyonic Council, he made a speech which brought about the Sacred War .

By way of revenge, Aeschines endeavoured to fix the blame for these disasters upon Demosthenes. In 336, when CtesiphonCtesiphon was one of the great cities of ancient Mesopotamia and the capital of the Parthian Empire and its successor, the Persian Empire, for more than 600 years. Located approximately 20 miles southeast of the modern city of Baghdad, along the river Tig proposed that his friend Demosthenes should be rewarded with a golden crown for his distinguished services to the state, he was accused by Aeschines of having violated the law in bringing forward the motion. The matter remained in abeyance till 330, when the two rivals delivered their speeches Against Ctesiphon and On the Crown. The result was a complete victory for Demosthenes.

Aeschines went into voluntary exile at RhodesThis article is about the Greek island of Rhodes. For other uses, see Rhodes (disambiguation). Rhodes Greek (Rodos), is the largest of the Dodecanese islands, and easternmost of the major islands of Greece in the Aegean Sea. It lies approximately 11 miles, where he opened a school of rhetoric. He afterwards removed to SamosSamos ( Greek Σαμος) is an island in southeastern Greece in the Aegean Sea, near the coast of Turkey. It is located between the island of Chios to the North and the Dodecanese Islands to the South. Products include tobacco, w, where he died in the seventy-fifth year of his age. His three speeches, called by the ancients "the Three Graces," rank next to those of Demosthenes. Photius knew of nine letters by him which he called the Nine Muses; the twelve published under his name (Hercher, Epistolographi Graeci) are not genuine.

1 Ancient Authorities

Demosthenes, De Corona and De Falsa Legatione; Aeschines, De Falsa Legations and In Ctesiphentem; Lives by PlutarchMestrius Plutarch (c. 120) was a Greek historian/ biographer and essayist. Born in the small town of Chaeronea, in the Greek region known as Boeotia, probably during the reign of the Roman Emperor Claudius, Mestrius Plutarch travelled widely in the Medite, PhilostratusPhilostratus was the name of several, three (or four), Greek sophists of the Roman imperial period: #Philostratus "the Athenian" (c. 170-245) #his nephew (?) Philostratus "of Lemnos" (born c. 190) #a grandson (?) of (2) Of these the most famous is Philost and LibaniusLibanius ( Greek) Libanios ca 314 AD ca 394) was a Greek-speaking teacher of rhetoric of the later Roman Empire, an educated pagan of the Sophist school in an Empire that was turning aggressively Christian and publicly burned its own heritage and closed t; the Exegesis of ApolloniusApollonius may refer to: Apollonius Dyscolus Apollonius of Perga; Apollonius of Rhodes; or Apollonius of Tyana..