be heralded?

Why, if any of the tragic poets coming on this stage after these proceedings should represent Thersites crowned by the Greeks, none of you would endure it, because Homer says he was a coward and false informer; but whenever you shall have crowned this man, do you not think you will be hissed by the judgment of all the Greeks? ...

I would gladly discuss this decree with the author before you, fellow-citizens, as to what great service Demosthenes is worthy to be crowned for.

If

you say, as embodied in the opening of the decree, that he has dug ditches around the walls well, I wonder at you, for having been their cause is a heavier count than having executed them well; and it is not for palisading the wall circuit or obliterating the public graves that an administrator should rightly merit honors, but for generating some new good to the city.

If you take up the second item of the decree, in which you have ventured to write him down a good citizen who has steadily spoken and acted for the highest good of the people of Athens, then strip the decree of humbug and boastfulness so that it may stick to facts, and prove what you allege. I will leave out the bribe-taking in the Amphissæan and Eubœan cases: but when you impute the merit of the Theban alliance to Demosthenes, you impose on the ignorant and insult those who know and understand; for by suppressing the nature of the crisis, and the reputation of those by whom the alliance was effected, you think to conceal from us the credit due the city and transfer it to Demosthenes. How great a fraud this is, I will try to make plain by a notable instance. The king of the Persians once, not long before the descent of Alexander upon Asia, sent to this people a letter both arrogant and barbarian; in which, after handling many other topics very boorishly, he had written thus at the close: "I will give you no gold," he said; "do not ask me, for you will not get it." Yet this same man, hemmed in by imminent dangers himself, sent voluntarily three hundred talents to the people which they wisely declined to accept. What brought the gold was the juncture and fear and the needs of allies; and the very same things brought about the alliance of the Thebans.

But while you bore us by harping on the name of the Thebans and their luckless alliance, you are silent on your grabbing the seventy talents you stole of the royal gold. Was it not for lack of money, for the sake of five talents, that the

enemy would not restore the Thebans their citadel? for lack of nine talents of silver, that when all the Arcadians were drawn out and the leaders ready to come to our aid, the ex pedition did not take place? And you roll in wealth and celebrate games for your own pleasures! And to crown all, gentlemen, the royal gold is with him, the perils with you.

The ill-breeding of these men is also worth observing. If Ctesiphon should dare call on Demosthenes to address you, and he should rise and laud himself, listening to him would be a heavier burden than his acts. For even when really superior men, of whom many noble actions are known to us, recite their own praises, we are impatient; but if one who is the disgrace of the city were to eulogize himself, who that heard him could endure it?

But if you are wise now, Ctesiphon, you will abstain from this impudent procedure, and make your defense in person; for you cannot set up the slightest pretense of being unequal to public speaking. It would become you oddly enough, when you have recently borne up under being appointed ambassador to Cleopatra the daughter of Philip, for condolence with her on the death of Alexander king of the Molossians, to pretend now that you cannot make a speech. When you are able to console a mourning woman, a foreigner at that, can you not defend a decree you have drawn up for pay ? or is this man you have ordered crowned, one who would be unknown to those he has benefited unless some one added his voice to yours? Ask the judges if they know Chabrias and Iphicrates and Timotheus, and question them why they gave those men public honors and erected their statues. All will reply to you with one voice — to Chabrias for the naval battle at Naxos, to Iphicrates because he annihilated the Lacedæmonian battalion, to Timotheus for circumnavigating Corcyra; and to others because one by one they have performed many brilliant feats in war. But should any one ask, Why to Demosthenes? As bribe-taker, as coward, as deserter from the ranks. And which will you be doing honoring him, or dishonoring yourselves and those who fell for you in battle? Imagine you see them protesting fiercely if he shall be crowned. For it would be marvelous indeed, fellow-citizens, if wood and stone and iron, things mute and senseless, we banish when they fall on any one and kill him; and if whoever slays himself, the hand that did the deed we bury apart from the body: yet Demosthenes, fellow

citizens, who indeed ordered this expedition, but betrayed the soldiers this man you should honor. By this not only the dead are insulted, but the living disheartened, on seeing that death is constituted the reward of patriotism, and their memory is to perish.

DEMOSTHENES.

On the Crown.

I HOLD the fortune of our commonwealth to be good, and so I find the oracles of Dodonæan Jupiter and Pythian Apollo declaring to us. The fortune of all mankind, which now prevails, I consider cruel and dreadful: for what Greek, what barbarian, has not in these times experienced a multitude of evils? That Athens chose the noblest policy, that she fares better than those very Greeks who thought, if they abandoned us, they should abide in prosperity, I reckon as part of her good fortune if she suffered reverses, if all happened not to us as we desired, I conceive she has had that share of the general fortune which fell to our lot. As to my fortune (personally speaking) or that of any individual among us, it should, as I conceive, be judged of in connection with personal matters. Such is my opinion upon the subject of fortune, a right and just one, as it appears to me, and I think you will agree with it. Æschines says that my individual fortune is paramount to that of the commonwealth, the small and mean to the good and great. How can this possibly be?

However, if you are determined, Æschines, to scrutinize my fortune, compare it with your own, and, if you find my fortune better than yours, cease to revile it. Look then from the very beginning. And I pray and entreat that I may not be condemned for bad taste. I don't think any person wise who insults poverty, or who prides himself on having been bred in affluence but by the slander and malice of this cruel man I am forced into such a discussion; which I will conduct with all the moderation which circumstances allow.

I had the advantage, Æschines, in my boyhood of going to proper schools, and having such allowance as a boy should have who is to do nothing mean from indigence. Arrived at man's estate, I lived suitably to my breeding; was choir master, ship commander, ratepayer; backward in no acts of liberality public or private, but making myself useful to the commonwealth

and to my friends. When I entered upon state affairs, I chose such a line of politics, that both by my country and many people of Greece I have been crowned many times, and not even you my enemies venture to say that the line I chose was not honorable. Such then has been the fortune of my life: I could enlarge upon it, but I forbear, lest what I pride myself in should give offense.

But you, the man of dignity, who spit upon others, look what sort of fortune is yours compared with mine. As a boy you were reared in abject poverty, waiting with your father on the school, grinding the ink, sponging the benches, sweeping the room, doing the duty of a menial rather than a freeman's son. After you were grown up, you attended your mother's initiations, reading her books and helping in all the ceremonies at night wrapping the novitiates in fawn skin, swilling, purifying, and scouring them with clay and bran, raising them after the lustration, and bidding them say, "Bad I have scaped, and better I have found;" priding yourself that no one ever howled so lustily - and I believe him! for don't suppose that he who speaks so loud is not a splendid howler! In the daytime you led your noble orgiasts, crowned with fennel and poplar, through the highways, squeezing the bigcheeked serpents, and lifting them over your head, and shouting Evo Saboe, and capering to the words Hyes Attes, Attes Hyes, saluted by the beldames as Leader, Conductor, Chest Bearer, Fan Bearer, and the like, getting as your reward tarts and biscuits and rolls; for which any man might well bless himself and his fortune!

When you were enrolled among your fellow-townsmen - by what means I stop not to inquire — when you were enrolled however, you immediately selected the most honorable of employments, that of clerk and assistant to our petty magistrates. From this you were removed after a while, having done yourself all that you charge others with; and then, sure enough, you disgraced not your antecedents by your subsequent life, but hiring yourself to those ranting players, as they were called, Simylus and Socrates, you acted third parts, collecting figs and grapes and olives like a fruiterer from other men's farms, and getting more from them than from the playing, in which the lives of your whole company were at stake; for there was an implacable and incessant war between them and the audience, from whom you received so many wounds, that