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Four speeches in public prosecutions,—« Against Androtion» (355); "Leptines» (354); "Timocrates» and «Aristocrates » (352),— opened his career with protest against corrupt administration at home. Addressing the assembly in his speeches: "On the Navy Boards » (354); «For Megalopolis» (352); and «For the Rhodians» (351), he warns Athens that she must organize her resources, that she must discountenance the tyranny of Greeks over Greeks, and must everywhere support the cause of Greek freedom against barbarian despotism. The speech (neither finished nor spoken), "Against Meidias» (349),-who had assaulted Demosthenes in public,-shows what bitter enmity the young reformer had provoked.

As Philip of Macedon gradually stretched his power along the coasts of Thrace and Thessaly, Demosthenes saw more and more clearly that this crafty king in the north was the great danger which threatened the disunited Greek cities. His nine speeches against Philip form two groups. (1) The "First Philippic (351 B. C.) urges that a force should be sent to the coasts of Thrace, and that citizens should serve in person. The three orations for "Olynthus» (349-8) plead the cause of the great city, which, with its confederacy of thirty-two towns, Philip destroyed in 348. So far Philip had been a foreign foe. But in 346 he became a Greek power by admission to the Amphictyonic Council. (2) The speeches of the second group-which have to reckon with a more definite Macedonian party within Greece itself-are, the speech "On the Peace» (346); the "Second Philippic" (344); "On the Embassy» (343); "On the Chersonese,” and the "Third Philippic" (341). Move by move the Macedonian game was explained by Demosthenes. At the last moment he won Byzantium back to the Athenian alliance and prevailed on Thebes to join Athens in making a last, but vain, stand at Chæronea (338).

In 336 B. C. Ctesiphon proposed that Demosthenes should receive a golden wreath of honor from the State. The orator Eschines raised legal objections, but was defeated when the case was tried, and left Athens. At the trial (330 B. C.) Demosthenes made a splendid defense of his past policy in the greatest oration of the old world, the speech "On the Crown.» «If the event had been manifest to the whole world beforehand,” he said, "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." In 322,-when the rising of the Greeks in the Lamian War, after Alexander's death, had been crushed,- Demosthenes took poison to avoid falling into the hands of the Macedonians.

Demosthenes is the greatest master of Greek prose. He combines all the best elements in earlier styles, and blends them in new harmonies. Some of his speeches for private law suits, written in the midst of his public career, show how this unapproached artist of political eloquence could at the same time equal or surpass Lysias and Isæus in their own field. Of our thirty-two private speeches only eleven are probably genuine, viz., the four against "Aphobus » and «Onêtor"; those against "Spudias," "Callicles,» «Pantænetus," "Nausimachus,» «Bootus >> (on the Name), and "Conon," with that "For Phormio.» Firm grasp of facts, sparing use of ornament, sincerity and sustained intensity are the characteristics which first strikes a modern reader in the orations of Demosthenes. We can no longer feel all the delicate touches of that exquisite skill which made them, to the Ancients, such marvelous works of art, and which led detractors to reproach them with excess of elaboration. But we can feel, at least, the orator's splendid mastery of every tone which the Greek language could yield, the intellectual greatness of the statesman, the moral greatness of the patriot who warned his people of the impending blow, and comforted them when it had fallen.

tragic public

Eschines, born in 389, or five years before Demosthenes, was a actor and a clerk to the assembly before he came forward, about 348, as a speaker. His natural eloquence, fluent, vehement, and often splendid, was set off by a fine person and voice, which the stage had taught him to make effective. In 346 he was twice an envoy to Philip. His speech “Against Timarchus» (345), arraigns this man who was about to prosecute him for breach of trust on the embassy as disqualified to speak in the assembly on account of a vicious life; his speech "On the Embassy » (343), in reply to his former colleague Demosthenes, gained him a narrow acquittal. After the failure of his speech "Against Ctesiphon » (330), - an elaborate attack on the whole life of Demosthenes,- he withdrew to Rhodes. The genius shown in his eloquence is marred by the want of earnestness and moral nobleness.

Lycurgus, of a noble priestly family, steward of the treasury from 338 to 326, is represented only by his oration "Against Leocrates» (332 B. C,), who had filed from Athens just after the battle of Chæronea, and who is here indicted for treason in a speech full of lofty indignation, a solemn protest on behalf of public spirit, in which a strain of the old style of Antiphon is blended with the luxu riance of Isocrates.

From Hypereides we have a speech, nearly complete, «For Euxenippus » (about 330 B. C.), interesting as showing the public belief in the dreams sent by a god to those who slept in his temple; fragments of a "Funeral Oration» on Leosthenes and the comrades who fell with him in the Lamian War (322 B. C.); of a speech spoken by Hypereides «Against Demosthenes » in 324, when the latter was accused of having taken bribes from Alexander's treasurer, Harpalus; and of a speech "For Lycophron » (earlier than 349 B. C.), when Lycurgus was accuser. All these were recovered, between 1847 and 1856, from papyri found in Egypt. Hypereides joined fire and pathos to exquisite wit and grace, and was preferred by some to Demosthenes himself.

Deinarchus, a Corinthian by birth, the last in the canon of the Ten Attic Orators, has left three speeches: "Against Demosthenes,» «Aristogeiton," and « Philocles," written when they were accused of taking bribes from Harpalus in 324 B. C. He was mainly a coarse imitator of Demosthenes, and far inferior, probably, to Demades, an orator on the Macedonian side at Athens, from whom there remain a few scanty fragments. Demetrius of Phalerum, a pupil of Aristotle, then prepared the decline of Attic oratory in his elegantly luxuriant style, "preferring his own sweetness to the weight and dignity of his predecessors,>>

From "Greek Literature." Part III, Chap. III.

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CELEBRATED PASSAGES FROM THE BEST ORATIONS

ANCIENT AND MODERN

(495 B. C.-1900 A. D.)

INTRODUCTION

HE "Celebrated Passages" which follow cannot be expected to do more than suggest the nature of the complete orations from which they are taken. It is hoped, however, that in what they suggest of the purposes and scope of oratory they will have great educational value, aside from their obvious use for ready and constant reference. While no attempt has been made to give complete speeches, as a rule, the entire text of the "Address of Mazzini to the Young Men of Italy,»* of the "Speech" of Robert Emmet before Lord Norbury, and the celebrated "Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death" speech of Patrick Henry (March 23d, 1775), have been given in full, as illustrations of the natural arrangement of the parts of an oration. In several other instances brief speeches are given in full, but the rule has been to include the largest possible number of celebrated passages at the expense of the exclusion of all passages not celebrated.

The work of collection began with the "Oration of Pericles over the Athenian Dead," which, as it is given in Thucydides, may be fairly accepted as the first oration authentically reported. It may have been composed instead of reported by Thucydides, as he certainly did compose others; but Pericles may be credited with it as safely as Patrick Henry may with Wirt's version (the only one on record) of his greatest speech. From Pericles to the twentieth century, the collection gives extracts which it is believed lawyers, clergymen, and all other public speakers, will find permanently useful for reference. The needs of all classes of professional speakers have been kept in view, and the compilation is intended also to give everything necessary to introduce students of law, divinity, and of literature in general to the great masterpieces of the great orators represented. It will be found by reference to Burke, Bossuet, Brougham, Calhoun, Cicero, Chatham, Clay, Curran, Demosthenes, Fénelon, Mirabeau, Webster, and other orators of the first rank, as they follow in alphabetical order, that a special effort has been made to include all those famous sayings and passages which have attained even an approximation to

This is considered by some the best speech of the nineteenth century. It is certainly one of the best ever delivered.

general currency. The rule has been to include celebrated passages only from orations (speeches, sermons, lectures, etc.), but in the cases of great orators who are also great writers, celebrated passages from essays or other forms of written prose have not been rigorously excluded. As no such collection as this, covering the entire range of oratory, has been attempted before, it is hoped that, in connection with the department of celebrated passages from poets most generally quoted by public speakers, it will give every student of oratory and every professional speaker what he most needs in the way of suggestion and illustration. The arrangement throughout is alphabetical by authors, so that it will be not less useful for reading than for reference, the great advantage of the arrangement by authors being that it impresses on the memory the name of the author in connection with the source of the thought and the form of its expression.

While celebrated phrases are frequently given without their context, the rule has been to give as often as possible with the phrase a representative extract from the original text long enough not merely to explain the phrase, but to suggest the character of the oration, and to show the writer's purpose."

*

* While many works have been used in preparing this collection, its heaviest obligation is to "The World's Best Orations» (F. P. Kaiser, St. Louis, ten volumes), and to the works of Epes Sargent, -that unpretentious poet and compiler whose work as a student of oratory in the first half of the nineteenth century made him the greatest popular educator of his generation in America.

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