What is underlying dispute?
Meidias slapped Demosthenes publicly in theatre
Dem where producer [choregus] of chorus in theatre festival - 2 years previously he volunteered to be choregos
Medias harrassed
1. opposed exemption of chorus from military service
2. tried to become overseer of dionysia
3. causes destruction of costumes and crowns Dem ordered for chorus
or is it robe and crown Dem would wear in procession
4. interfered with training of chorus
5. interfered with chorus’ performance
6. assaulted Dem
7. prevented Dem’s tribe from winning
Why does Dem think Medias is a bad guy?
Nb: he had been elected general and cavalry leader on occasion and had won many public honors
1. his victims were afraid of him or bribed by him
2. tried to subvert arbitrator and Archons re Dem’s slander suit
3. attacked arbitrator, Strato, who found against him at scrutiny and had him disenfranchised (but never paid the fine)

What was rel bt Meidias and Dem
1. Dem brought lawsuits against Aphobus and two other guardians in 363 (ultimately were successful)
2. Meidias, powerful politician and ally of Aphobus, bring antidosis against Meidias to prevent him from pursuing lawsuit against guardians
3. Meidias never answered Dem’s slander suit but has been able to prevent Dem for executing on the jment
4. Meidias bribed Euctemon to sue Dem for desertion to embarrass Demosthenes [nb: Dem wrote against Androiton for Diodorus to give in connection with a lawsuit brought by Diodorus and Euctemon against Androiton; Iseaus also refers to an Euctemon]
5. He tried to bribe a family of a murder victim to sue Dem rather than Aristarchus, the killer.  Aristarchus was an ally of Meidias.  When that didn’t work he pretended that Aristarchus and Meidias were allies (i.e. asking Aristarchus to reconcile Meidias and Dem) and then finally accused Aristarchus to the council opportunistically
6.

Procedure/Jurisdiction
After theater festival an assembly where citizens could bring complaints related to festival [probole].  If they won, they could bring trial

What does this say about festival?  Why have it?
1. expect it to be a time of intense competition
2. expect people to behave well [cf other laws about festival time; i.e. can’t arrest debtors; can’t summon the choregos]
What is charge Dem brings?
1. impiety [destroys "sacred apparel] [death penalty or total confiscation of property]
2. M counters w/ hubris, and Dem says yes and
Anticipated defense: 1) should have been a private suit [dike] not a graphe[Dem: it is a question of public business]; 2) Dem trying to manipulate jury into giving him the power to destroy Medias; 3) Meidias didn’t do more than others have done in rivalry and that was never a case for a lawsuit; 4) anger [not the same as hot blood in adultery case]; 5) laches ­ Dem didn’t retalite against the blow
3. nb: Dem sets procedural trap for Meidias ­ i.e., he gets Meidias to claim the tech defense (it should be hubris), which allows Dem to then talk about all of M’s hubris as a threat to the democracy
What was result?
1) speech never delivered; Dem settles out of court
2) speech delivered; Dem wins guilty verdict but on sentence asks for money (to be paid to the state) not death
 

Note how Dem
1. insists on personal nature of insult [i.e., it’s not politics]
2. works on anger of Athenians [by insulting me he insulted you; if you don’t protect me, no one will be a chorus master beca\use there will be no honor in it; cf. Strato, the arbitrator, who’d be a citizen still if he accpeted the bribe; the rich are tyrants]
3. Meidias is a tight wad; if he want to be my rival he should have been choregos of his own tribe in competition with me
4. Meidias is a rich man who uses his wealth to stifle poor people from exercising democratic rights
5. Meidias is a cavalryman; i.e., aristo who buys fancy gear for his horse but hopes never to use it in battle
6. Meidias is a new Alcibiades: rich, successful politician; from a wealthy family
7. Meidias used the trireme he donated a) to give him an excuse not to serve in cavalry; b) to pick up supplies for his personal use/business
8. Meidias was a lousy, corrupt oversees governor

Ober

A. Political elites were also cultural elites; but it was a topos of Ath rhetoric that ordinary cits were quick/smart and that democracy itself educated citizens in both democratic values and practices.  -> Rhetoric that juries should "teach" opponent (and future elite leaders) by convicting/punishming.
B. orators construct rhetoric of "democratic education" by telling juries and assembly that there votes/decisions "teach" the youth and by assertions of jury’s knowledge (you know better than I).  The fact that these decisions were "group" decisions added to their authority; Athenians valued "group wisdom".   [counter to elite ideology (cf. plato) that only those who know should rule (i.e., any individual w/in demos might know less than an elite leader, but as a group the demos knows best)].
C. Thus, rhetors attacked opponents "rhetoric" as an effort to subvert, blind  jury. [nb: each side can use this argument in a trail].  NB: premise is that rhetoric is anti-democratic.  In order to justify his position/influence, the rhetor must claim to speak for the demos.  Logically, therefore, he must argue that his opponent is a sykophant or  bribe taker) [nb: this position, taken to a logical extreme is also anti-democratic: if there’s nothing to argue about, who needs isegoria].  Effect is to create a competition in which rhetores compete to be most democratic, most the spokesman of the will of the demos. Demos as assembly and jury got to judge the spectacle while retaining suspician of orators.
D. Thus, especially in a dike, the litigants often claim that they are not rhetores, not well trained, are especially young and vulnerable ­ this was, effectively, a fiction, but one that the jury didn’t mind. [it promoted the ideal of the simple, not formally educated, truly democratic man who was right to rely on the democratic jury to protect him from the elite].
E. But, rhetores also developed an invective topos: my opponent is an illiterate bum, stupid, ignorant and boorish, etc.  How to handle the countradiction (i.e., bt topoi: rhetorical education is bad for democracy and uneducated people are worse (have less honor)  than educated people): belief that rhetorically educated elite should use their skills for the benefit of the demos (thus calling your opponent a bum is saying, he doesn’t deserve to work for you, only the best [i.e., rhetorically educated like me] should have the chance to serve the demos.
F. The conflict is bound up in inherent ideological conflict in Athenian culture: on the one hand, egalitarian ideology said that the judgment of the group was best, thus any citizen, regardless of cultural/economic status, deserved to/could participate in process of decision making for Athens.  On the other hand, elite ideology said some people were more talented than others and if these talents were properly developed through education, such folks would deserve a position of leadership/pre-eminence in decision making for Athens.  Both ideologies co-existed in Athens at once, despite the conflict between them.  What rhetores did was manage the rhetorical tension the conflict generated by means of dramatic fictions: e.g. rich guy hires a logographer to write a speech for him in which he will present himself as a poor, simple guy who needs the jury’s protection.  Elite orators pretended they were speaking spontaneously from the heart (not trained and practice in speechmaking and the particular speech).  The dramatic fictions were also a form of social control by the demos over the elite (i.e., you can have power, but only if you wield it on our terms).
G. For Aristotle,  democracy was associated with relative economic poverty.  The demos was the poor.  Athenians didn’t have a sense of "the middle class."  They thought of poor and rich, and even though you might be quite wealthy, you could call yourself poor because you were not wealthy enough to pay a liturgy.  It was the absence of a third category (our "middle class") that permitted an ambiguity in class rhetoric.  Elites were afraid that the demos would redistribute wealth.  The demos was afraid elite would try to deprive them of political/legal equality.  Trade was, demos is legally/politically equal, rich keeps their money ­ as a class.  Individual rich men had liturgies and eisphora; they had individual incentives to do so (appeals to the jury’s self interst in litigation) and individual penalties imposed legally if they failed.  Orators’ discussion suggests jury’s knew they could convict on the basis of wealth alone, but didn’t because a) it was unjust in their minds; b) it was not in the demos’ longterm self interst..
H. So Athenian rich and poor made economic and legal peace but the poor man’s resentment of the rich provided a fertile ground for class tensions that could be exploited in legal rhetoric.  A standard topos of the orators was the decadant luxury of his opponent (lifestyles of the rich and famous type argument).  He in contrast used his wealth to benefit the demos.  Thus the demos checked competitive displays of wealth among the elite (a common elite agonistic practice ­ think of Bill Gate’s house) by rewarding those that benefited the demos and punishing displays of wealth that did not.
I. Rich guys who used their money in ostentatious, arrogant, self-indulgent displays were showing hubris.  Hubris was, in legal rhetoric, something only rich guys could commit, and something they committed to remind poor guys that the rich guys were "better" than they were [not unlike dorm damage].  It was because they were rich that they could get away this kind of behavior.  Money, or at least too much of it, accordingly was a social problem ­ it made the possessor behave improperly.  There’s a logical slip in here, but not one that prevented orators from suggesting that their opponents were rich and therefore that the jurors should consider them hubristic and destructive of proper social relations [all non-citizens defer to citizens; all citizens are equal].  In order to protect the democracy, jurors had to be vigilant against the rich (but one by one ­ no class warfare).  Conversely, rich guys in their defense emphasized their diligent and temperate behavior (cf. John D. Rockafeller who made his kids, gasp, make their own beds).  Self made men emphaiszed that they were rich because they worked hard for their success.  They paid their taxes properly and don’t begruge it.
J. Oddly to us, wealthy litigants also claimed poverty.  They were careful to claim relative poverty and insist that they were "quiet Athenians" [i.e., not active in public life ­ which suggested they were the victims fo sykophants] (cf. "just a man of the people" claims by US senators who are almost all millionaires).  Jurors knew the speaker wasn’t poor, but cut him slack because he was willing to humble himself before them and claim common status with them.
K. Wealth could help a speaker when he could demonstrate that he had devoted it to the benefit of the demos in liturgies, etc.  Speakers claimed a personal relationship with the jurors; I’ve done this charis [act of generosity] for you, now you as a friend, do something comparable for me [vote for me, protect me against my opponen].  This kind of charis relationship was not unsual in the ancient world [or any], although Greeks and Romans, to our mind, were stunningly frank about it.  Legal rhetoric was unusual only in that it claimed this relationship between an individual [the wealthy litigant] on the one hand, and an abstract, collective entity [the demos, polis] on the other.
L. Rhetoric about status had comparable tensions as rhetoric about wealth.  Status linked to wealth but a more complicated concept than class [according to Ober].  Status as a concept has two parts: the first, fixed and clear cut in the law (if not in social reality): e.g.: citizen, vs. metic, vs slave.  Second part very loose: place in social hierarchy (as complicated for Athenians as for Americans: tension between egalitarian and aristo ideologies).  You tend to know high status people when you see them but hard to define in abstract; birth, wealth, education and social behavior (cf. polo ­ a behavior that only rich people can engage in, which may be why they do it) are factors which make a person’s status visible, but it’s a mix of these factors whose proportions can vary.
M. Aristocratic ideology naturalizes status ­ high class people desrve their status because of these attributes.  Democratic ideology says these attributes  can make it easier for some people to obtain high status than other people (i.e., it’s just an edge).  Tension in Athens because both ideologies existed.  The elites thought they deserved their natural position of dominance in politics.  Nb ­ Athens retained a sense of ‘noble families’ the way modern democratic Britain retains its aristocracy of birth ­ in democratic practice their noble birth didn’t get them much.  I.e., the rhetorical argument, spare me for the sake of my ancestors appears not to have swayed 4th century juries (query about 5th).  Conversely, the topos of the "convicted aristocrat" seems to have supported democratic ideology (the demos is strong enough to convict men with famous names, even if they think it’s a damn shame).  In general, the oligarch revolutions (particularly the Thirty) had done a lot both to discredit aristo ideology of status, and to create a counter democratic ideology [no man is ‘born noble’; all can be made noble by their service to the state; all Athenian citizens are sons of the soil (autochthonos) and as such share a common ancestry that is far more noble than an non-Athenian’s ­ which is why orators spend so much time claiming their opponent wasn’t really a citizen ].
N. More effective for orators than dwelling on lineage was dwelling on aristo behaviors (polo playing) ­ symposiums, drinking party, cavalry rather than infantry service, violent rivalries over hetairai, etc.  Folks who did these kinds of things, the argument went, had no shame, and no respect for the conventions of ordinary behavior.  Hence the argument implied, they probably were anti-democratic and bad for the demos.  The jury, accordingly, needed to humble them in order to spare the demos.
O. On the other end of the scale, orators would claim their opponents were slaves.  The point wasn’t so much that a juror would believe it.  Rather, it would offer a new paradigm through which to interpret the opponent’s behavior.  Slaves are inherently unfit for democratic service [demo ideology is that cits are sons of the soil ­ very difficult to claim common ancestry with democratic citizens if your lineage includes slaves, i.e., non citizens].  The slave topoi suggested to jurors that the opponent’s conduct demeaned democracy, just the way the aristo decadance topoi did, only from different angles.  My opponent is a slave, therefore he can’t appreciate the demands of democracy.  My opponent is an aristo, therefore he despises democracy and would support an oligarch revolution.  Slave and aristo are threats to the demos from opposite ends of the scale.
P. Nevertheless, orators would slang each other on the basis of their alleged "servile professions ­ menial jobs, manual labor, jobs that free citizens shouldn’t normally do [because their slaves would do it for them].  Nb these were attacks in graphai, not dikai.  Again, the point wasn’t literal ­ no one believed that demosthenes was poor.  Instead, the attack gave the jury a lense through which to observe your opponent’s behavior.  People who worked in servile occupations needed wages.  They could be bought.  Such people shouldn’t lead the state, because you could never trust that they believed what they said [someone might have bought them].  There’s nothing wrong with the demos working for a living, but something deeply troubling about the rhetores who do.