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!