Our days have not fallen on the common chances of mortal life. We
have been set to bequeath a story of marvels to posterity. Is not
the king of Persia, he who cut through Athos, and bridged the
Hellespont, he who demands earth and water from the Greeks, he who
in his letters presumes to style himself lord of all men from the
sunrise to the sunset, is he not struggling at this hour, no longer
for authority over others, but for his own life? Do you not see the
men who delivered the Delphian temple invested not only with that
glory but with the leadership against Persia? While Thebes--
Thebes, our neighbor city--has been in one day swept from the face
of Greece--justly it may be in so far as her general policy was
erroneous, yet in consequence of a folly which was no accident, but
the judgment of heaven. The unfortunate Lacedaemonians, though they
did but touch this affair in its first phase by the occupation of
the temple,--they who once claimed the leadership of Greece,--
are now to be sent to Alexander in Asia to give hostages, to parade
their disasters, and to hear their own and their country's doom from
his lips, when they have been judged by the clemency of the master
they provoked. Our city, the common asylum of the Greeks, from
which, of old, embassies used to come from all Greece to obtain
deliverance for their several cities at our hands, is now battling,
no more for the leadership of Greece, but for the ground on which it
stands. And these things have befallen us since Demosthenes took
the direction of our policy. The poet Hesiod will interpret such a
case. There is a passage meant to educate democracies and to
counsel cities generally, in which he warns us not to accept
dishonest leaders. I will recite the lines myself, the reason, I
think, for our learning the maxims of the poets in boyhood being
that we may use them as men:--
"Oft hath the bad man been the city's bane;
Oft hath his sin brought to the sinless pain:
Oft hath all-seeing Heaven sore vexed the town
With dearth and death and brought the people down;
Cast down their walls and their most valiant slain,
And on the seas made all their navies vain!"
Strip these lines of their poetic garb, look at them closely, and I
think you will say these are no mere verses of Hesiod--that they are
a prophecy of the administration of Demosthenes, for by the agency
of that administration our ships, our armies, our cities have been
swept from the earth. ... "O yes," it will be replied, "but then he
is a friend of the constitution." If, indeed, you have a regard
only to his delicacy you will be deceived as you were before, but
not if you look at his character and at the facts. I will help you
to estimate the characteristics which ought to be found in a friend
of the constitution; in a sober-minded citizen. I will oppose to
them the character that may be looked for in an unprincipled
revolutionist. Then you shall draw your comparison and consider on
which part he stands--not in his language, remember, but in his
life. Now all, I think, will allow that these attributes should
belong to a friend of the constitution: First, that he should be of
free descent by both parents so that the disadvantage of birth may
not embitter him against those laws which preserve the democracy.
Second, that he should be able to show that some benefit has been
done to the people by his ancestors; or, at the worst, that there
had been no enmity between them which would prompt him to revenge
the misfortunes of his fathers on the State. Third, he should be
virtuous and temperate in his private life, so that no profligate
expense may lead him into taking bribes to the hurt of the people.
Next, he should be sagacious and able to speak--since our ideal is
that the best course should be chosen by the intelligence and then
commended to his hearers by the trained eloquence of the orator,
--though, if we cannot have both, sagacity must needs take rank
before eloquence. Lastly, he must have a stout heart or he may play
the country false in the crisis of danger or of war. The friend of
oligarchy must be the opposite of all this. I need not repeat the
points. Now, consider: How does Demosthenes answer to these
conditions?
[After accusing Demosthenes of being by parentage half a Scythian,
Greek in nothing but language, the orator proceeds: ]--
In his private life, what is he? The tetrarch sank to rise a
pettifogger, a spendthrift, ruined by his own follies. Then having
got a bad name in this trade, too, by showing his speeches to the
other side, he bounded on the stage of public life, where his
profits out of the city were as enormous as his savings were small.
Now, however, the flood of royal gold has floated his extravagance.
But not even this will suffice. No wealth could ever hold out long
against vice. In a word, he draws his livelihood not from his own
resources but from your dangers. What, however, are his
qualifications in respect to sagacity and to power of speech? A
clever speaker, an evil liver! And what is the result to Athens?
The speeches are fair; the deeds are vile! Then as to courage I
have a word to say. If he denied his cowardice or if you were not
aware of it, the topic might have called for discussion, but since
he himself admits in the assemblies and you know it, it remains only
to remind you of the laws on the subject. Solon, our ancient
lawgiver, thought the coward should be liable to the same penalties
as the man who refuses to serve or who has quitted his post.
Cowardice, like other offenses, is indictable.
Some of you will, perhaps, ask in amazement: Is a man to be indicted
for his temperament? He is. And why? In order that every one of
us fearing the penalties of the law more than the enemy may be the
better champion of his country. Accordingly, the lawgiver excludes
alike the man who declines service, the coward, and the deserter of
his post, from the lustral limits in the market place, and suffers
no such person to receive a wreath of honor or to enter places of
public worship. But you, Ktesiphon, exhort us to set a crown on the
head to which the laws refuse it. You by your private edict call a
forbidden guest into the forefront of our solemn festival, and
invite into the temple of Dionysos that dastard by whom all temples
have been betrayed. ... Remember then, Athenians, that the city
whose fate rests with you is no alien city, but your own. Give the
prizes of ambition by merit, not by chance. Reserve your rewards
for those whose manhood is truer, whose characters are worthier.
Look at each other and judge not only with your ears but with your
eyes who of your number are likely to support Demosthenes. His
young companions in the chase or the gymnasium? No, by the Olympian
Zeus! He has not spent his life in hunting or in any healthful
exercise, but in cultivating rhetoric to be used against men of
property. Think of his boastfulness when he claims by his embassy
to have snatched Byzantium out of the hands of Philip, to have
thrown the Acharnians into revolt, to have astonished the Thebans
with his harangue! He thinks that you have reached the point of
fatuity at which you can be made to believe even this--as if your
citizen were the deity of persuasion instead of a pettifogging
mortal! And when at the end of his speech, he calls as his
advocates those who shared his bribes, imagine that you see upon
this platform where I now speak before you, an array drawn up to
confront their profligacy--the benefactors of Athens: Solon, who set
in order the Democracy by his glorious laws, the philosopher, the
good legislator, entreating you with the gravity which so well
became him never to set the rhetoric of Demosthenes above your oaths
and above the laws; Aristides, who assessed the tribute of the
Confederacy, and whose daughters after his death were dowered by the
State--indignant at the contumely threatened to justice and
asking: Are you not ashamed? When Arthmios of Zeleia brought
Persian gold to Greece and visited Athens, our fathers well-nigh put
him to death, though he was our public guest, and proclaimed him
expelled from Athens and from all territory that the Athenians rule;
while Demosthenes, who has not brought us Persian gold but has taken
bribes for himself and has kept them to this day, is about to
receive a golden wreath from you! And Themistokles, and they who
died at Marathon and Plataea, aye, and the very graves of our
forefathers--do you not think they will utter a voice of
lamentation, if he who covenants with barbarians to work against
Greece shall be--crowned!