Demosthenes

DEMOSTHENES, Orations 59. Theomnestus and Apollodorus against Neaera

Demosthenes, a Greek statesman and orator, was born in Athens in 384 BCE. His orations and

provide insight into the politics and culture of ancient Greece during the 4th century BCE. In Orations

59 he describes the important role of marriage in Athenian society and how gender expectations

differed for women and men who were free born.

 

The speech before us is therefore a bitter personal attack upon Neaera and Stephanus. It is

charged that the former had been a slave and a common prostitute, and that the latter had tried to

pass off her children as his own and had twice given a daughter of hers in marriage to Athenian

citizens as being herself of genuine civic birth. In the latter case the deceived husband was a certain

Theogenes who held the office of king-archon, as whose wife the woman in question had to

perform religious functions of the most sacred sort.

The details of Neaera’s life as a courtesan, the baseness of Stephanus in making use of her and

her daughter for the purpose of extorting blackmail, and the repudiation of Neaera’s daughter by

her two successive husbands, when they learned the truth of her origin, are narrated with great, and

perhaps unnecessary, frankness.

The only defence, it would appear, that Stephanus could make was that the children were

indeed his own, borne to him by a legitimate Athenian wife before the period of his association

with Neaera. Yet the daughter was sent away by her two successive husbands, as being an alien

and the daughter of Neaera, and her son was denied admission to the clan. Furthermore,

Apollodorus was ready to let the question of the children’s parentage be determined by putting to

the torture the women-servants of Neaera, and declares that he tendered this challenge to

Stephanus, but that the latter refused to allow the test. Why Stephanus should have taken this

course, if the children were really his own, it is hard to see

The Stephanus here attacked cannot have beenthe same as the one whom Apollodorus (in

Oration XLV) had previously charged with giving false testimony, for if that had been the case, the

speaker would certainly in that suit have made use of the facts brought forward in this oration.

 

 

Both ancient and modern critics have for the most part agreed in regarding this oration as the

work of someone other than Demosthenes. The date can be fixed with fair accuracy. The speech

must have been written before Demosthenes renewed and put through the proposal of Apollodorus

regarding the Theoric funds in 339 b.c., and after the return to Athens of the poet Xenocleides (see

§ 26), who was banished from Macedonia in 373 b.c.

The student may consult Schaefer, iii. pp. 179 ff., and Blass, iii. pp. 535 ff.

 

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orations_lix_theomnestus_apollodorus_neaera/1939/pb_LCL351.349.xml