by Demosthenes
26 1 But Demosthenes put a bold face on the matter and introduced a bill providing that the case should be referred for investigation to the council of the Areiopagus, and that those should be brought to trial who were found guilty there. 2 He was himself, however, among the first condemned by the council, and came before the court for trial, where he was sentenced to a fine of fifty talents and delivered over to prison in default of payment. 858 But out of shame at the charge under which he lay, as he says, and owing to the weakness of his body, which could not endure confinement, he ran away, through the carelessness of some of his keepers and the connivance of others. 3 At any rate, we are told that when he was in flight at a short distance from the city, he learned that some of the citizens who were his enemies were in pursuit of him, and therefore wished to hide himself; and when they called upon him loudly by name, and came up near to him, and begged him to accept from them provision for his journey, declaring that they were bringing money from home for this very purpose, and were pursuing him only in order to get it to him; and when at the same time they exhorted him to be of good courage and not to be pained at what had happened, Demosthenes broke out all the more into cries of grief, saying: 4 “Surely I must be distressed to leave a city where my enemies are as generous as I can hardly find friends to be in another.”
5 And he bore his exile without fortitude, taking up his quarters in Aegina and Troezen for the most part, and looking off towards Attica with tears in his eyes, so that utterances of his are on record which are not generous or consonant with his spirited efforts as a statesman. 6 We are told, namely, that as he was leaving the city he lifted up his hands towards the acropolis and said: “O potent Guardian of the City, Athena, how, pray, canst thou take delight in those three most intractable beasts, the owl, the serpent, and the people?” 7 Moreover, when young men came to visit and converse, he would try deter them from public life, saying that if two roads had been presented to him in the beginning, one leading to the bema and the assembly, and the other straight to destruction, and if he could have known beforehand the evils attendant on a public career, namely, fears, hatreds, calumnies and contentions, he would have taken that road which led directly to death.
27 1 But while he was still undergoing the exile of which I have spoken, Alexander died, and the Greek states proceeded to form a league again, while Leosthenes was displaying deeds of valour and walling Antipater up in Lamia, where he held him in siege. 2 Accordingly, the orators Pytheas and Callimedon (called the Stag-beetle) fled from Athens and joined the party of Antipater, and travelling about with the regent’s friends and ambassadors tried to prevent the Greeks from revolting or attaching themselves to Athens; 3 but Demosthenes, joining himself to the ambassadors from Athens, used his utmost efforts in helping them to induce the cities to unite in attacking the Macedonians and expelling them from Greece. 4 And Phylarchus states that in Arcadia Pytheas and Demosthenes actually fell to abusing one another in an assembly, the one speaking in behalf of the Macedonians, the other in behalf of the Greeks. 5 Pytheas, we are told, said that just as we think that a house into which asses’ milk is brought must certainly have some evil in it, so also a city must of necessity be diseased into which an Athenian embassy comes; whereupon Demosthenes turned the illustration against him by saying that asses’ milk was given to restore health, and the Athenians came to bring salvation to the sick.
6 At this conduct the Athenian people were delighted, and voted that Demosthenes might return from exile. The decree was brought in by Demon of Paeania, who was a cousin of Demosthenes; and a trireme was sent to Aegina to fetch him home. 7 When he set out to go up to the city from Piraeus, not an archon or a priest was missing, and all the rest of the people also met him in a body and welcomed him eagerly, It was at this time, too, as Demetrius the Magnesian says, that he lifted his hands towards heaven and blessed himself for that day, since he was coming home from exile more honourably than Alcibiades did; for he had persuaded, not forced, his fellow-citizens to welcome him. 8 It is true that his pecuniary fine remained standing against him (for it was not lawful to remit an assessment by act of grace), 859 but they found a device to evade the law. It was their custom, namely, in the case of a sacrifice to Zeus the Saviour, to pay a sum of money to those who prepared and adorned the altar, and they now gave Demosthenes the contract to make these preparations for fifty talents, which was just the amount of his assessment.
28 1 However, he did not enjoy his native city for long after his return from exile, but the cause of Greece was speedily crushed, and in the month of Metageitnion the battle at Crannon took place, in that of Boëdromion the Macedonian garrison entered Munychia, and in that of Pyanepsion Demosthenes died, in the following manner.
2 When Antipater and Craterus were reported to be advancing upon Athens, Demosthenes and his associates succeeded in escaping by stealth from the city, and the people, on motion of Demades, passed sentence of death upon them. 3 Since they dispersed themselves to different places, Antipater sent his soldiers about to arrest them, under the command of Archias the so called Exile-hunter. This man was a native of Thurii, and the story goes that he was once a tragic actor; indeed, it is recorded that Polus of Aegina, the best actor of his time, was a pupil of his. But Hermippus states that Archias was one of the pupils of Lacritus the rhetorician; while Demetrius says that he belonged to the school of Anaximenes. 4 This Archias, then, finding that Hypereides the orator and Aristonicus of Marathon and Himeraeus the brother of Demetrius the Phalerean had taken refuge in the sanctuary of Aeacus at Aegina, haled them away and sent them to Antipater at Cleonae. There they were put to death, and Hypereides, it is said, also had his tongue cut out.
29 1 Moreover, on learning that Demosthenes had taken sanctuary in the temple of Poseidon at Calauria, Archias sailed across to the island in small boats, and after landing with Thracian spearmen tried to persuade the fugitive to leave the temple and go with him to Antipater, assuring him that he would suffer no harsh treatment. 2 But it chanced that Demosthenes, in his sleep the night before, had seen a strange vision. He dreamed, namely, that he was acting in a tragedy and contending with Archias for the prize, and that although he acquitted himself well and won the favour of the audience, his lack of stage decorations and costumes cost him the victory. 3 Therefore, after Archias had said many kindly things to him, Demosthenes, just as he sat, looked steadfastly at him and said: “O Archias, thou didst never convince me by thine acting, nor wilt thou now convince me by thy promises.” And when Archias began to threaten him angrily, “Now,” said he, “thou utterest the language of the Macedonian oracle; but a moment ago thou wert acting a part. Wait a little, then, that I may write a message to my family.” 4 With these words, he retired into the temple, and taking a scroll, as if about to write, he put his pen to his mouth and bit it, as he was wont to do when thinking what he should write, and kept it there some time, then covered and bent his head. 5 The spearman, then, who stood at the door, laughed at him for playing the coward, and called him weak and unmanly, but Archias came up and urged him to rise, and reïterating the same speeches as before, promised him a reconciliation with Antipater. 6 But Demosthenes, now conscious that the poison was affecting and overpowering him, uncovered his head; and fixing his eyes upon Archias, “Thou canst not be too soon now,” said he, “in playing the part of Creon in the tragedy and casting this body out without burial. But I, O beloved Poseidon, will depart from thy sanctuary while I am still alive; whereas Antipater and the Macedonians would not have left even thy temple undefiled.” 7 So speaking, and bidding someone support him, since he was now trembling and tottering, he had no sooner gone forth and passed by the altar than he fell, and with a groan gave up the ghost.
860 30 1 As for the poison, Ariston says he took it from the pen, as I have said; but a certain Pappus, from whom Hermippus took his story, says that when he had fallen by the side of the altar, there was found written in the scroll the beginning of a letter, “Demosthenes to Antipater,” and noth
ing more; 2 and that when men were amazed at the suddenness of his death the Thracians who had stood at the door told the story that he took the poison into his hand from a cloth and put it to his mouth and swallowed it; and they themselves, strange to say, had supposed that what he swallowed was gold; and that the little maid who served him, when inquiries were made by Archias, said that Demosthenes had long worn that cloth girdle as a safeguard against his enemies. 3 And even Eratosthenes himself says that Demosthenes kept the poison in a hollow bracelet, and that he wore this bracelet as an ornament upon his arm. 4 But the divergent stories of all the others who have written about the matter, and they are very many, need not be recounted; except that Demarches the relative of Demosthenes says that in his opinion it was not due to poison, but to the honour and kindly favour shown him by the gods, that he was rescued from the cruelty of the Macedonians by a speedy and painless death. 5 And he died on the sixteenth of the month Pyanepsion, the most gloomy day of the Thesmophoria, which the women observe by fasting in the temple of the goddess.
It was to this man, a little while after his death, that the Athenian people paid worthy honour by erecting his statue in bronze, and by decreeing that the eldest of his house should have public maintenance in the prytaneium. And this celebrated inscription was inscribed upon the pedestal of his statue: —
“If thy strength had only been equal to thy purposes, Demosthenes,
Never would the Greeks have been ruled by a Macedonian Ares.”
6 Of course those who say that Demosthenes himself composed these lines in Calauria, as he was about to put the poison to his lips, talk utter nonsense.
31 1 Now, a short time before I took up my abode in Athens, the following incident is said to have occurred. A soldier who had been called to an account by his commander, put what little gold he had into the hands of this statue of Demosthenes. 2 It stood with its fingers interlaced, and hard by grew a small plane-tree. Many of the leaves from this tree, whether the wind accidentally blew them thither, or whether the depositor himself took this way of concealing his treasure, lay clustering together about the gold and hid it for a long time. 3 At last, however, the man came back, found his treasure intact, and an account of the matter was spread abroad, whereupon the wits of the city took for a theme the incorruptibility of Demosthenes and vied with one another in their epigrams.
4 As for Demades, he had not long enjoyed his growing reputation when vengeance for Demosthenes brought him into Macedonia, whose people he had disgracefully flattered, only to be by them justly put to death. He had been obnoxious to them even before this, but now fell under a charge from which there was no escape. 5 A letter of his, namely, leaked out, in which he had urged Perdiccas to seize Macedonia and deliver the Greeks, who, he said, were fastened to it only by an old and rotten thread (meaning Antipater). 6 And when Deinarchus the Corinthian denounced him for this, Cassander flew into a rage and slew the son of Demades as he stood close by his father’s side, and then ordered that Demades should be likewise killed. Demades was now learning amid his extremest misfortunes that traitors sell themselves first, a truth of which Demosthenes had often assured him, but which he would not believe.
7 And so, Sosius, thou hast the promised Life of Demosthenes, drawn from such written or oral sources as I could find.
Comparison of Demosthenes and Cicero
886 1 1 These, then, are the memorable incidents in the recorded careers of Demosthenes and Cicero which have come to our knowledge. 2 And though I have renounced the comparison of their oratorical styles, yet this, I think, ought not to be left unsaid, namely, that Demosthenes devoted to the rhetorical art all the powers of speech which he possessed by nature or acquired by practice, surpassing in force and effectiveness his rivals in forensic and judicial pleading, in pomp and majesty of utterance the professional declaimers, and in precision and skill the sophists; 3 Cicero, on the other hand, became widely learned and had a variety of interest in the pursuit of letters, and left behind him not a few philosophical treatises of his own conforming to the fashion of the Academy; indeed, even in the speeches which he wrote for the forum and the courts he clearly desires to display by the way a considerable acquaintance with letters.
4 It is possible, too, to get a glimpse of the character of each in his style of speaking. For that of Demosthenes, which had no prettiness or pleasantry, and was condensed with a view to power and earnestness, did not smell of lamp-wicks, as Pytheas scoffingly said, but of water-drinking and anxious thought, and of what men called the bitterness and sullenness of his disposition; whereas Cicero was often carried away by his love of jesting into scurrility, and when, to gain his ends in his cases, he treated matters worthy of serious attention with ironical mirth and pleasantry, he was careless of propriety. Thus, in his defence of Caelius, he said that his client, surrounded as he was by great luxury and extravagance, did nothing out of the way when indulging in pleasures; for not to enjoy what is in one’s possession was madness, he said, particularly when the most eminent philosophers assert that true happiness consists in pleasure. 5 And we are told that when Cato prosecuted Murena, Cicero, who was then consul, defended him, and because of Cato’s beliefs made much fun of the Stoic sect, in view of the absurdities of their so called paradoxes; and when loud laughter spread from the audience to the jurors, Cato, with a quiet smile, said to those who sat by: “What a funny man we have, my friends, for consul!” 6 And it would seem that Cicero was naturally prone to laughter and fond of jesting; his face, too, was smiling and peaceful. But in that of Demosthenes there was always a certain intense seriousness, and this look of thoughtfulness and anxiety he did not easily lay aside. For this reason his enemies, as he himself says, called him morose and ill-mannered.
2 1 Still further, then, in their writings it is possible to see that the one touches upon his praises cautiously and so as not to give offence, when there was need of this for some weightier end, while on other occasions he is careful and moderate; whereas Cicero’s immoderate boasting of himself in his speeches proves that he had an intemperate desire for fame, his cry being that arms must give place to the toga and the laurel of triumph to the tongue. And at last he praises not only his deeds and actions, but also his speeches, both those which he delivered himself and those which he committed to writing, as if he were impetuously vying with Isocrates and Anaximenes the sophists, instead of claiming the right to lead and instruct the Roman people,
“Steadfast, in heavy armour clad, destructive to foes.”
It is necessary, indeed, that a political leader should prevail by reason of his eloquence, but ignoble for him to admire and crave the fame that springs from his eloquence. Wherefore in this regard Demosthenes is more stately and magnificent, since he declares that his ability in speaking was a mere matter of experience, depending greatly upon the goodwill of his hearers, and considers illiberal and vulgar, as they are, those who are puffed up at such success.
3 1 It is true that in haranguing and guiding the people both had equal power, so that even those who controlled armies and camps had need of their services; Chares, Diopeithes and Leosthenes needed Demosthenes, and Pompey and the young Caesar needed Cicero, as Caesar himself says in his Memoirs addressed to Agrippa and Maecenas. But what is thought and said most of all to reveal and rest the character of a man, namely power and authority, which rouses every passion and uncovers every baseness, this Demosthenes did not have, nor did he give any such proof of himself, since he held no conspicuous office, nor did he even command the force which was raised by him against Philip; 3 whereas Cicero was sent out as quaestor to Sicily, and as pro-consul to Cilicia and Cappadocia, at a time when the love of wealth was at its greatest height, and when those who were sent out as praetors and governors, feeling that theft was an ignoble thing, resorted to open plundering, so that the taking of property was not thought heinous, but he who did this in moderation was held in high esteem; and yet Cicero gave many proofs of his contempt for wealth, and many of his humanity and goodness
. 4 And when in Rome itself he was appointed consul in name, but really received the power of a dictator and sole ruler against Catiline and his conspirators, he bore witness to the truth of Plato’s prophecy that states would then have respite from evil, when in one and the same person, by some happy fortune, great power and wisdom should be conjoined with justice.
5 Moreover, it is said to the reproach of Demosthenes that he made money by his eloquence, since he secretly wrote speeches for Phormio and Apollodorus, who were adversaries in the same case, and since he was accused in the matter of the Great King’s money, and condemned for taking that of Harpalus. 6 And if we should say that those who write these things (and these writers are not few) tell what is untrue, still, at least, that Demosthenes could not bring himself to look with indifference upon gifts which kings offered as marks of honour and favour, and that this was not to be expected of a man who lent money on bottomry, it is impossible to deny; 7 whereas, in the case of Cicero, that the Sicilians when he was quaestor, and the king of Cappadocia when he was pro-consul, and his friends in Rome when he was going into exile, offered him large sums and begged him to take them, only to meet with his refusal, has been said.
4 1 And surely in the matter of banishment, at least, for the one it was disgraceful, since he had been convicted of theft; but for the other it was a most honourable result, since he had rid his country of baleful men. 2 Therefore no account was made of the one when he went into exile; but for the other the senate changed its garb and put on mourning and could not be induced to discuss any business until Cicero’s return had been decreed. However, Cicero spent his exile idly, remaining quietly in Macedonia; but the exile of Demosthenes proved to be a great part of his service to the state. 3 For he took part in the struggles of the Greeks, as has been said, and drove out the Macedonian envoys in the various cities which he visited, and so showed himself to be a far better citizen than Themistocles or Alcibiades when they were having the same fortune; and furthermore, when he returned from exile, he again devoted himself to this same public service, and steadfastly continued waging war upon Antipater and the Macedonians. 4 Cicero, on the contrary, was reproached in the senate by Laelius for sitting silent when Caesar asked leave to stand for the consulship, which was contrary to law, since he was still a beardless youth. And Brutus also, in one of his letters, accused him of having reared up a tyranny greater and more severe than that which the writer himself had overthrown.