Demosthenes, Speeches (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose; rhetoric] [word count] [lemma count] [Dem.]. | ||
<<Dem. 50 | Dem. 51 (Greek) | >>Dem. 52 |
51.1If the decree, men of the senate, ordered that the crown should be given to the man having the largest number of advocates, it would have been senseless for me to claim it, for Cephisodotus alone has spoken on my behalf, while a host of pleaders has spoken for my opponents. But the fact is, the people appointed that the treasurer should give the crown to the one who first got his trireme ready for sea; and this I have done; so I declare that it is I who should be crowned. 51.2Also I am surprised that my opponents neglected their ships, but took care to get their orators ready; and they seem to me to be mistaken in regard to the whole affair, and to imagine that you are grateful, not to those who do their duty, but to those who say they do it; and they have formed a totally different estimate regarding you from that which I hold. For this very reason it is right that you should feel more kindly disposed toward me; for it is plain that I entertain a higher opinion of you than they do. 51.3Surely it would have been right and proper, men of
51.4When you had passed a decree and confirmed it, to the effect that whoever did not bring his ship around to the pier before the last day of the month should be placed under arrest and handed over to the court, I brought my ship up to the pier, and for this I received a crown from you, while the others had not even launched their ships; they therefore have made themselves liable to imprisonment. Would it not, then, be the strangest possible act on your part, if you should be seen to confer a crown on people who had suffered themselves to become liable to so grievous a penalty? 51.5As to the ship's equipment, moreover, all, that is, which the state is bound to supply to the trierarchs, I purchased it with my own resources and took nothing from the public stores, while these men used equipment of yours and spent none of their own money for this purpose. And surely they cannot say either that they got their ship ready for trial before I did mine; for mine was manned before they had so much as touched theirs, and you all saw the ship being tested. 51.6More than this, I secured the very best rowers, giving by far the highest wages. If my opponents had had rowers inferior to mine, it would have been nothing disgraceful, but in fact they have hired rowers of no sort whatever, though they lay claim to larger numbers. And yet, how can it be fair, when they manned their ship later than I did mine, for them now to receive the crown as having been the first to get ready?
51.7I think therefore that even without my saying anything you recognize that you would most justly grant me the crown, but I wish to show you that of all people in the world these men have the least claim to it. How can I prove this most clearly? By what they have themselves done. For they sought out the man who would take their trierarchy on the lowest terms, and have let the service to him. Yet is it not unjust to shrink from making the outlay, and still to demand a share in the honors accruing from it, and while they lay the blame for not bringing their ship up to the pier at that time on the man they hired, to bid you now reward them for good service rendered? 51.8You ought, men of
51.13I wish, now that I have entered upon this subject, to set forth to you also the consequences which result from such actions. When a man who has taken the trierarchy for hire sets sail, he plunders and pillages everybody; the profits he reaps for himself, but whoever it may chance to be of you citizens pays the damages; and you alone of all people are unable to travel anywhere without a herald's staff of truce because of the acts of these men in seizing hostages and in provoking reprisals; 51.14so that, if one looks at the matter frankly, he will find that triremes such as these have sailed forth, not for you, but against you. For a man who serves as trierarch in the interest of
51.16It is right that I should say something about those who have spoken as their advocates. Certain people are so convinced that they have the right to do or say whatever they please before you, that some of those who joined with Aristophon note in preferring his charges, and were bitter against those who let out their trierarchies, now bid you to crown these people here; and they prove one or the other of two things against themselves. Either in the former instance they brought forward charges that were baseless, or they have now been bribed to plead the cause of my opponents; 51.17and they bid you grant them a favor, as if the argument were about a gift instead of a prize, or as if you, at the instance of men like them, were seeking to win the favor of those who neglect your interests, and as if it were not rather your duty, at the instance of better men, to show favor to those who serve you as they should. Then again, they care so little for a good reputation, and are so thoroughly of the opinion that everything is of secondary importance compared with gain, that they not only have the audacity to contradict in their public speeches what they said before, but even now their statements do not agree; for they assert that the trireme which is to win the crown should have its proper crew on board, yet they bid you crown the trierarchs who have let their service devolve upon others. 51.18And they state that no one got his ship in readiness before my opponents did, yet they bid you crown us jointly, which is not what the decree orders. I am as far from granting this as I am from having let out my trierarchy; I would not submit to the one, nor have I done the other. They pretend to be pleading in the interests of justice, but they show more zeal than any one of you would do without reward, as though their duty was to earn their pay, not to give an opinion. 51.19And then, as if they were not members of a free state, in which because of this fact anyone who chooses has the right to speak, but as if they possessed this right as a sort of sacred prerogative of their own, if any man speaks in your midst in defence of what is right, they feel themselves grossly wronged, and say that he is an impudent fellow. And they have gone so far in their senseless folly, that they think that, if they call a man impudent who has spoken but once, they will themselves be thought good and worthy men all their lives. 51.20Yet it is because of the public speeches of these men that many matters are going from bad to worse, while it is owing to those who honestly oppose them that not everything is lost. Such are the pleaders, then, that my opponents have engaged to speak on their behalf, and so readily open to attack are they themselves for any who wish to speak any ill of them (as they well know); yet they have seen fit to contest this matter, and they have had the audacity to speak ill of another, when they should have been well content to keep out of trouble themselves.
51.21For the wrongdoing and insolence of these men nobody is more to blame than yourselves; for you inquire what the character of every man is from the speakers who you know are doing what they do for pay; you do not investigate for yourselves. Yet is it not absurd for you to consider these orators themselves the basest of your citizens, but to regard those whom they praise as worthy men? 51.22For they are their own masters in all that they do, and they all but sell the public weal by the voice of the common crier; and they order you to crown, or not to crown, whomsoever they will, setting themselves up as superior to your decrees. I advise you, men of
Demosthenes, Speeches (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose; rhetoric] [word count] [lemma count] [Dem.]. | ||
<<Dem. 50 | Dem. 51 (Greek) | >>Dem. 52 |