Hard Boiled Athenians

In the absence of a public prosecutor, it was up to private individuals to take one another to court, and they would rarely do so unless they were motivated by personal hostility. Demosthenes was once charged with desertion by a group of his enemies, but the case never came to court. One of his prosecutors had allegedly been bought off, and was later found dead – brutally murdered and mutilated by a madman who, by some strange coincidence, had once been a friend of Demosthenes'.

Hans van Wees discusses Demosthenes 21.103 and Aeschines 2.148 in Greek Warfare: Myths and realities (2004).