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In that year his famous speeches against Antony Philippics, as he called them after the title of Demosthenes's orations against Philip of Macedon were delivered. These cost him his life. All such were outlawed and given up to destruction. Cicero's name was in the fatal list.
A soldier, being summoned to appear before his superior officer, and answer to an accusation brought against him, put that little gold which he had into the hands of Demosthenes's statue.
Since Gustav Droysen, in his "Alexander the Great," led off with this theory, the best writers upon Greek history have gradually adopted it, deserting Grote more and more. Droysen went too far. With him Alexander was the veritable demigod whom he sottishly decreed that his subjects should see in him. Droysen, of course, has too little respect for Demosthenes's policy.
All the first orators of the world have been grave men, relying on this reality. One thought the philosophers of Demosthenes's own time found running through all his orations, this, namely, that "virtue secures its own success." "To stand on one's own feet" Heeren finds the keynote to the discourses of Demosthenes, as of Chatham.
Nearly all that Demosthenes's foes cite to his discredit seems weak considering the known vices of the period, while much of it, as when they taunt him with always drinking water instead of wine, implies on his part a creditable strength of will, which is further attested by his self-discipline in mastering his chosen art.
People thought that sometimes when he spoke out thus on a sudden, his eloquence was inspired from above, as when once he uttered, in regular though unpremeditated verse, the forceful oath: "By earth, by all her fountains, streams, and floods." Demosthenes's first speeches were harsh and obscure. The sentences were too long, the metaphors violent and inapt.
He used to call Theophrastus his special luxury. And being asked which of Demosthenes's orations he liked best, he answered, "The longest." And as for the eminent men of his own time, either in eloquence or philosophy, there was not one of them whom he did not, by writing or speaking favorably of him, render more illustrious.
When he was not studying, or joking, or rhyming, during those two short years of college life, he read: Cudworth's "Intellectual System," Hobbes's "Dialogues," Bacon's "Essays," Plutarch's "Morals," Cicero's "De Officiis," Montaigne's "Essays," Rousseau's "Émile," Demosthenes's "Orations," Aristotle's "Politics," Ralt's "Dictionary of Trade," and the "Lex Mercatoria."
But that Cicero refused, from the Sicilians when he was quaestor, from the king of Cappadocia when he was proconsul, and from his friends at Rome when he was in exile, many presents, though urged to receive them, has been said already. Moreover, Demosthenes's banishment was infamous, upon conviction for bribery; Cicero's very honorable, for ridding his country of a set of villains.
However, you might, if you like, drop your metrical fustian, and adapt any one of Demosthenes's Philippics with a few alterations. That is the fashionable method with speakers nowadays. Zeus. Ah, that is a royal road to eloquence simplifies matters very much for a man in difficulties. Herm. Go ahead, then. Zeus.
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