In 337 B.C., the year after the battle of Chaeronea, the proposal of Ctesiphon to confer a crown on Demosthenes for his services to Athens gave Aeschines a new weapon with which to strike at his enemy. He impeached Ctesiphon for illegality. The case was not actually tried till 330 B.C., when Aeschines, failing to obtain a fifth of the votes, was fined a thousand drachmae, and, being unable or unwilling to pay, went into exile. He retired to Asia Minor, and lived either in Ephesus or Rhodes. He is said by Plutarch to have spent the rest of his life as a professional Sophist, that is to say, no doubt, as a teacher of rhetoric;[228] but we have no further information about his life or the manner or date of his death. § 2. _Public Character_ Aeschines cannot be considered as a statesman, since he had no definite policy. He was, as he admitted himself, an opportunist. ‘Both individual and state,’ he says, ‘must shift their ground according to change of circumstances, and aim at what is best for the time’;[229] and though he claims to be ‘the adviser of the greatest of all cities,’[230] he never had in public matters any higher principle than this following of the line of least resistance. It is necessary, however, to consider whether he was actually the corrupt politician that Demosthenes makes him out to be. Athenian opinion with regard to corrupt practices was less strict than ours; Hyperides admits that there are various degrees of guiltiness in the matter of receiving bribes; the worst offence is to receive bribes from improper quarters, _i.e._ from an enemy of the State, and to the detriment of the State.[231] This principle implies a corollary that to receive bribes for doing one’s duty and acting in the best interests of one’s country is a venial offence, if indeed it is an offence at all; in which case a man’s guilt or innocence may be a matter for his individual conscience to determine. Demosthenes definitely accused Aeschines of changing his policy in consequence of bribes received from Philip. It is known that at the beginning of his public life he was an opponent of Macedon, and we have his own account of his conversion on the occasion of the embassy to Megalopolis: