| Demosthenes, Speeches (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose; rhetoric] [word count] [lemma count] [Dem.]. | ||
| <<Dem. 22.1 | Dem. 22.12 (Greek) | >>Dem. 22.21 |
22.8Coming now to the law which explicitly denies to the Council the right to ask a reward, if they have not built the warships, it is worth while to hear the defence that he will set up, and to get a clear view of the shamelessness of his behavior from the arguments that he attempts to use. The law, he says, forbids the Council to ask for the reward, if they have not built the ships. But, he adds, the law nowhere prohibits the Assembly from giving it. “If I gave it at their request, my motion was illegal, but if I have never mentioned the ships in the whole of my decree, but give other grounds for granting a crown to the Council, where is the illegality of my motion?”
22.9It is surely not difficult for the jury to find the right answer to this: that in the first place the Committee of the Council and the chairman, who puts these proposals to the vote, duly put the question and called for a show of hands—“those who are of opinion that the Council have deserved a reward, to vote aye; on the contrary, no.” Yet surely men who neither ask nor expect a reward should never have put the question at all.
22.10Besides this, when Meidias and others brought certain accusations against the Council, the Councillors fairly leaped up on to the platform and begged not to be robbed of their reward. There is no need for me to tell the jury this, for you were present in the Assembly and know what happened there. So when he says that the Council did not ask for it, have that answer ready for him. But I will also prove to you that the people are forbidden by the law to give the reward, if the Council have not built the ships.
22.11For the law, that the Council should not ask for the reward if they have not built the war ships, was framed in that way, men of Athens , to prevent the possibility of the people being influenced or misled. The legislator held that the question should not depend on the abilities of the speakers, but that whatever he could devise that was at once just and expedient for the people, should be fixed by law. “You have not built the ships? Then don't ask for the reward.” Where the law does not permit the asking, does it not absolutely forbid the giving?
Athens , which is worth going into. Why is it that when the Council have performed all their other duties satisfactorily, and no one has any complaint to make, yet, if they have not built the ships, they are not allowed to ask for the reward? You will find that this stringent enactment is in the interests of the people. For I suppose no one would deny that all that has happened to our city, in the past or in the present, whether good or otherwise—I avoid an unpleasant term—has resulted in the one case from the possession, and in the other from the want, of warships.
22.13Many instances might be given, ancient and modern, but of those that are most familiar to your ears, take if you please this. The men who built the Propylaea and the Parthenon, and decked our other temples with the spoils of Asia , trophies in which we take a natural pride,—you know of course from tradition that after they abandoned the city and shut themselves up in Salamis , it was because they had the war galleys that they won the sea-fight and saved the city and all their belongings, and made themselves the authors for the rest of the Greeks of many great benefits, of which not even time can ever obliterate the memory.
22.14Well, you say, but that is ancient history. But take something that you have all seen. You know that lately you sent help to the Euboeans within three days and got rid of the Thebans by an armistice. note Could you have done all this so promptly, if you had not had new vessels to convey your force? You would have found it impossible. Many other successes might be mentioned that have resulted from our being provided with these ships in sound condition.
22.15Yes, and how many disasters from unsound ships? I will pass over most of them; but in the Decelean war note—I am reminding you of a bit of old history which you all know better than I do—though many serious disasters befell our city, she did not succumb till her fleet was destroyed. But why need me cite ancient instances? You know how it stood with our city in the last war with the Lacedaemonians note when it seemed unlikely that you could dispatch a fleet. You know that vetches were sold for food. But when you did dispatch it, you obtained peace on your own terms.
22.16Therefore, men of Athens , seeing that warships have such weight in either scale, you nave done rightly to set this strict limit to the Council's claim to the reward. For if they should discharge all their other duties satisfactorily, but fail to build these ships, by which we gained our power at the first and by which we retain it today, all their other services are of no avail, for it is the safety of the whole State that must be ensured for the people before every thing. Now the defendant is so obsessed with the idea that he can make any speech or proposal he wishes, that though the Council has discharged its other duties in the way that you have heard, but has not built the warships, he moved to grant them their reward.
22.12Now there is another question, men of
| Demosthenes, Speeches (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose; rhetoric] [word count] [lemma count] [Dem.]. | ||
| <<Dem. 22.1 | Dem. 22.12 (Greek) | >>Dem. 22.21 |
