| Demosthenes, Speeches (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose; rhetoric] [word count] [lemma count] [Dem.]. | ||
| <<Dem. 21.54 | Dem. 21.63 (Greek) | >>Dem. 21.73 |
21.60Then again there is Aristeides of the tribe of Oeneis, who has had a similar misfortune. He is now an old man and perhaps less useful in a chorus, but he was once chorus-leader for his tribe. You know, of course, that if the leader is withdrawn, the rest of the chorus is done for. But in spite of the keen rivalry of many of the chorus-masters, not one of them looked at the possible advantage or ventured to remove him or prevent him from performing. Since this involved laying hands on him, and since he could not be cited before the Archon as if he were an alien whom it was desired to eject, every man shrank from being seen as the personal author of such an outrage.
21.61Then is not this, gentlemen of the jury, a shocking and intolerable position? On the one hand, chorus-masters, who think that such a course might bring them victory and who have in many cases spent all their substance on their public services, have never dared to lay hands even on one whom the law permits them to touch, but show such caution, such piety, such moderation that, in spite of their expenditure and their eager competition, they restrain themselves and respect your wishes and your zeal for the festival. Meidias, on the other hand, a private individual who has been put to no expense, just because he has fallen foul of a man whom he hates—a man, remember, who is spending his money as chorus-master and who has full rights of citizenship—insults him and strikes him and cares nothing for the festival, for the laws, for your opinion, or for the god's honor.
Colonus was one of the accusers when Chabrias note was tried for his life on charges relating to Oropus, and that he showed himself the bitterest of them all, and that afterwards he won the prize at the Dionysia with a chorus of boys. Yet Chabrias neither struck him nor snatched the crown off his head nor in any way intruded where he had no right.
21.65I could mention many others who on various grounds have quarrelled with their neighbors, but I have never seen or heard of anyone who carried his insolence so far as to behave like this. And I am quite sure that no one here can recall any case where a man, involved in a public or private dispute, has taken his stand beside the umpires while they were being named, or dictated the oath when they were being sworn, or paraded his hostility on any such occasion.
21.66These and all similar acts, Athenians, are partly excusable in a chorus-master who is carried away by emulation; but to harass a man with one's hostility, deliberately and on every occasion, and to boast one's own power as superior to the laws, that, by Heaven! is cruel and unjust and contrary to your interests. For if each man when he becomes chorus-master could foresee this result: “If So-and-so is my enemy—Meidias for example or anyone else equally rich and unscrupulous—first I shall be robbed of my victory, even if I make a better show than any of my competitors next I shall be worsted at every point and exposed to repeated insults:” who is so irrational or such a poor creature that he would voluntarily consent to spend a single drachma?
21.67I suppose what tends to make everyone public-spirited and liberal with his money is the reflection that under a democracy each man has his share of just and equal rights. Now I, men of Athens , was deprived of those rights through this man's acts, and, quite apart from the insults I endured, I was robbed of my victory. Yet I shall prove to all of you beyond a doubt that Meidias, without committing any outrageous offence, without insulting or striking me, had it in his power both to cause me trouble and to display his public spirit to you in a legitimate way, so that I should not be able to open my lips against him.
21.68This is what he ought to have done, Athenians. When I offered myself to the Assembly as chorus-master for the tribe of Pandionis, he should have got up and offered himself as a rival master for his own tribe of Erechtheis he should have put himself on equal terms with me and spent his money as I was spending mine and tried in that way to wrest the victory from me; but not even as my rival should he have thus insulted and struck me.
21.69As it was, he did not adopt this course, by which he might have done honor to the people, nor did he work off his high spirits in this way. No; I was his target, I who in my madness, men of Athens ,—for it may be madness to engage in something beyond one's power perhaps in my ambition, volunteered for chorus-master. He harassed me with a persecution so undisguised and so brutal that neither the sacred costumes nor the chorus nor at last even my own person was safe from his hands.
21.62Now although men have quarrelled often enough, whether on private or on public grounds, no one has ever been so lost to shame as to venture on such conduct as this. Yet it is said that the famous Iphicrates once had a serious quarrel with Diocles of the Pitthean deme, and, to make matters worse, Iphicrates' brother Teisias happened to be a chorus-master in competition with Diocles. Iphicrates was a wealthy man with many friends and had a high opinion of himself, as a man would naturally have who had earned so many honors and distinctions at your hands; 21.63but Iphicrates never went under cover of night to the goldsmiths' shops, he never ripped up the costumes intended for the festival, he never bribed the instructor and hindered the training of the chorus, he never played any of the tricks that Meidias repeatedly practised. No, he submitted to the laws and to the wishes of his fellow-citizens, and patiently witnessed the victory and the crowning of his enemy. And he was right; for he felt that such submission was due to the constitution under which he himself had enjoyed such prosperity.
21.64Take another instance. We all know that Philostratus of
| Demosthenes, Speeches (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose; rhetoric] [word count] [lemma count] [Dem.]. | ||
| <<Dem. 21.54 | Dem. 21.63 (Greek) | >>Dem. 21.73 |
