Contesting the Lessons from the Past:
Aeschines’ Recourse to Family History

Bernd K. Steinbock (University of Western Ontario)

Accused by Demosthenes of treacherous dealings with Philip II, Aeschines defends his support for the Peace of Philocrates in 346 B.C. While his opponents had tried to rally the Athenians to continue the war by pointing to the heroic deeds of the ancestors, Aeschines drew a different lesson from the Athenian past (Aeschin. 2.74-78): One should indeed emulate the ancestors’ heroic achievements, but also avoid their mistakes, such as the disastrous Sicilian expedition and the foolish rejection of the Spartan peace offer in 406, which ultimately led to the tyranny of the Thirty. Aeschines ends by naming his father and uncle as sources for these historical paradigms.

Previous scholars have seen in this passage merely a variation of the familiar rhetorical topos of the example of the ancestors and a boastful comparison of Aeschines’ illustrious family to the debased family of his accuser (cf. Paulsen 1999: 345, 349). Such a reading, however, ignores the socio-political relevance of this section.

Approaching this passage from the perspective of social memory, this paper argues that Aeschines attempts to challenge the predominant interpretation of the Athenian past by using his family as alternative source for his knowledge of Athenian history.

Arguing for the continuation of the war against Philip, Aeschines’ opponents fell back upon the patriotic Athenian master narrative, as promoted in the Athenian funeral speeches (Loraux 1989, 155-71; Thomas 1989, 196-237; Gehrke 2003) and symbolized through monuments such as the Propylaea on the Acropolis (cf. Epaminondas’ remark in Aeschin. 2.105). Contesting their lessons from the past, Aeschines provides historical examples of his own, drawing upon his family history as an alternative carrier of social memory (cf. Thomas 1989, 95-144). His portrayal of his father and uncle as staunch democrats in the Athenian civil war (cf. Aeschin. 2.78) is more than a boastful comparison to Demosthenes’ family; it is a precondition if his fellow Athenians were to accept them as an authoritative source for Athenian history (similarly Aeschin. 3.191; cf. Wolpert 2002).

This passage thus illustrates the manifestation and contestation of a shared image of the past in 4^th-century Athenian public discourse. It shows how family memory can be used to correct the exclusively chauvinistic Athenian master narrative, but also how the official memorial framework and Athenian ideology informed this very family narrative.