Demades, On the Twelve Years (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose; rhetoric] [word count] [lemma count] [Demad.]. | ||
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1.1The laws have given you the right, Athenians, to acquit or punish men on trial. A doctor cannot treat his patients skilfully if he has not discerned the cause of the disease, nor can a member of a jury give a fair vote unless he has followed intelligently the rights and wrongs of the case. 1.2Since I have myself become exposed to the full hatred of the orators, I am asking not only for divine assistance but for your help also. For they are casting aspersions on my personal history, thinking to undermine your confidence in my speech. I am of no consequence whether alive or dead; for what do the Athenians care if Demades is lost to them, too? No soldier will shed tears over my death—(How could he, when war brings him advancement and peace destroys his livelihood?); but it will be lamented by the farmer, the sailor, and everyone who has enjoyed the peaceful life with which I fortified
1.7As they attempted to question the rest of my administration, I wish to make a few points in connexion with it and then to pass on to the remainder of my defence in order to prove their dishonesty to you. I am the son of Demeas, Athenians, as the elder ones among you know, and the early part of my life I lived as best I could, neither doing harm to the community nor troubling any individual in the city. I merely persisted in trying, by my own efforts, to better my humble position. 1.8Penury may involve inconvenience and hardship but it carries with it no discredit, since poverty is frequently, I imagine, a mark not of weakness of character but of sheer misfortune. When I entered public life I did not concentrate on lawsuits or the perquisites to be derived from writing speeches but on speaking freely from the platform, a practice which makes the lives of orators dangerous but holds out the clearest opportunities of success, if men are careful note; for, though they succumb to the speaker, their country's safety must not also fall a victim. 1.9I have, to bear me out, the burial of a thousand Athenians note performed by the hands of our adversaries, hands which I won over from enmity to friendship towards the dead. Then, on coming to the fore in public life, I proposed the peace. I admit it. I proposed honors to Philip. I do not deny it. By making these proposals I gained for you two thousand captives free of ransom, a thousand Athenian dead, for whom no herald had to ask, and Oropus without an embassy. 1.10The hand that wrote them was constrained, not by Macedonian gifts, as my accusers falsely allege, but by the need of the moment, the interest of my country, and the generosity of the king. For he entered the war as our foe but emerged from the struggle as a friend, awarding to the vanquished the prize of the victors. 1.11Again, there came a second crisis for the city; for I deliberately ignore the intervening dangers. All other inhabitants of
Demades, On the Twelve Years (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose; rhetoric] [word count] [lemma count] [Demad.]. | ||
<<Demad. 1.1 | Demad. 1.4 (Greek) | >>Demad. 1.16 |