SELECTIONS FOR PRACTISE

CLOSE OF THE ORATION ON THE CROWN

BY DEMOSTHENES

The people gave their voice, and the danger that hung upon our borders went by like a cloud. Then was the time for the upright citizen to show the world if he could suggest anything better:-now, his cavils come too late. The statesman and the adventurer are alike in nothing, but there is nothing in which they differ more than this. The statesman declares his mind before the event, and submits himself to be tested by those who have believed him, by fortune, by his own use of opportunities, by every one and everything. The adventurer is silent when he ought to have spoken, and then, if there is a disagreeable result, he fixes an eye of malice upon that. As I have said, then was the opportunity of the man who cared for Athens and for the assertion of justice.

But I am prepared to go further:-If any one has had a new light as to something which it would have been expedient to do then, I protest that this ought not to be concealed from me. But if there neither is nor was any such thing; if no one to this very hour is in a position to name it; then what was your adviser to do? Was he not to choose the best of the visible and feasible alternatives? And this is what I did, Æschines, when the herald asked, “Who

wishes to speak?" His question was not, Who wishes to rake up old accusations? or, Who wishes to give pledges of the future? In those days you sat dumb in the assemblies. I came forward and spoke.

Come now-it is better late than never: point out what argument should have been discovered-what opportunity that might have served has not been used by me in the interests of Athens-what alliance, what policy was available which I might better have commended to our citizens?

As, however, he bears so hardly upon the results, I am ready to make a statement which may sound startling. I say that, if the event had been manifest to the whole world beforehand, if all men had been fully aware of it, if you, Æschines, who never opened your lips, had been ever so loud or so shrill in prophecy or in protest, not even then ought Athens to have forsaken this course, if Athens had any regard for her glory, or for her past, or for the ages to come. Now, of course, she seems to have failed; but failure is for all men when Heaven so decrees. In the other case, she, who claims the first place in Greece, would have renounced it, and would have incurred the reproach of having betrayed all Greece to Philip. If she had indeed betrayed without a blow those things for which our ancestors endured every imaginable danger, who would not have spurned, Æschines, at you? Not at Athens-the gods forbid-nor at me. In the name of Zeus, how could we have looked visitors in the face if, things having come to their present pass, Philip having been elected leader and lord of all the struggle against it had been sustained by others without our help, and this, tho never once in her past history our city had preferred inglorious safety to the perilous vindication of honor? What Greek, what barbarian

does not know that the Thebans, and their predecessors in power, the Lacedæmonians, and the Persian king, would have been glad and thankful to let Athens take anything that she liked, besides keeping what she had got, if she would only have done what she was told, and allowed some other power to lead Greece?

Such a bargain, however, was for the Athenians of those days neither conditional, nor congenial, nor supportable. In the whole course of her annals, no one could ever persuade Athens to side with dishonest strength, to accept a secure slavery, or to desist, at any moment in her career, and from doing battle and braving danger for preeminence, for honor, and for renown.

You, Athenians, find these principles so worthy of veneration, so accordant with your own character, that you praise none of your ancestors so highly as those who put them into action. You are right. Who must not admire the spirit of men who were content to quit their country, and to exchange their city for their triremes in the cause of resistance to dictation; who put Themistocles, the author of his course, at their head, while as for Kyrsilos, the man who gave his voice for accepting the enemy's terms, they stoned him to death, yes, and his wife was stoned by the women of Athens? The Athenians of those days were not in search of an orator or a general who should help them to an agreeable servitude. No, they would not hear of life itself if they were not to live free. Each one of them held that he had been born the son, not only of his father and his mother, but of his country also. And wherein is the difference? It is here. He that recognizes no debt of piety save to his parents awaits his death in the course of destiny and of nature. But he that deems himself the son of his

country also will be ready to die sooner than see her enslaved. In his estimate those insults, those dishonors which must be suffered in his city when she has lost her freedom will be accounted more terrible than death.

If I presumed to say that it was I who thus inspired you with a spirit worthy of your ancestors, there is not a man present who might not properly rebuke me. What I do maintain is that these principles of conduct were your own; that this spirit existed in the city before my intervention, but that, in the successive chapters of events, I had my share of merit as your servant. Eschines, on the contrary, denounces our policy as a whole, invokes your resentment against me as the author of the city's terrors and dangers, and, in his anxiety to wrest from me the distinction of the hour, robs you of glories which will be celebrated as long as time endures. For, if you condemn Ktesiphon on the ground that my public course was misdirected, then you will be adjudged guilty of error: you will no longer appear as sufferers by the perversity of fortune.

But never, Athenians, never can it be said that you erred when you took upon you that peril for the freedom and safety of all. No, by our fathers who met the danger at Marathon; no, by our fathers who stood in the ranks at Platea; no, by our fathers who did battle on the waters of Salamis and Artemision; no, by all the brave who sleep in tombs at which their country paid those last honors which she had awarded, Eschines, to all of them alike, not alone to the successful or the victorious! And her award was just. The part of brave men had been done by all. The fortune experienced by the individual among them had been allotted by a power above man.

Here is the proof. Not when my extradition was de

manded, not when they sought to arraign me before the Amphictyonic Council, not for all their menaces or their offers, not when they set these villains like wild beasts upon me, have I ever been untrue to the loyalty I bear you. From the outset, I chose the path of a straightforward and righteous statesmanship, to cherish the dignities, the prerogatives, the glories of my country: to exalt them: to stand by their cause. I do not go about the market-place radiant with joy at my country's disasters, holding out my hand and telling my good news to any one who, I think, is likely to report it in Macedon; I do not hear of my country's successes with a shudder and a groan and a head bent to earth, like the bad men who pull Athens to pieces, as if, in so doing, they were not tearing their own reputations to shreds, who turn their faces to foreign lands, and, when an alien has triumphed by the ruin of the Greeks, give their praises to that exploit, and vow that vigilance must be used to render that triumph eternal.

Never, powers of Heaven, may any brow of the immortals be bent in approval of that prayer. Rather, if it may be, breathe even into these men a better mind and heart; but if so it is that to these can come no healing, then grant that these, and these alone, may perish utterly and early on land and on the deep: and to us, the remnant, send the swiftest deliverance from the terrors gathered above our heads; send us the salvation that stands fast perpetually.