the Pythian Games will come round, and the
convention of the Hellenic States will hold its sessions. Our State has
been concerned on account of the measures of Demosthenes regarding
present crises. You will appear, if you crown him, accessory to those
who broke the general peace. But if, on the other hand, you refuse the
crown, you will free the State from blame. Do not take counsel as if it
were for an alien, but as if it concerned, as it does, the private
interest of your city; and do not dispense your honors carelessly, but
with judgment; and let your public gifts be the distinctive possession
of men most worthy. Not only hear, but also look around you and consider
who are the men who support Demosthenes. Are they his fellow-hunters, or
his associates in old athletic sports? No, by Olympian Zeus, he was
never engaged in hunting the wild boar, nor in care for the well-being
of his body; but he was toiling at the art of those who keep up
possessions.

Take into consideration also his art of juggling, when he says that by
his embassy he wrested Byzantium from the hands of Philip, and that his
eloquence led the Acarnanians to revolt, and struck dumb the Thebans. He
thinks, forsooth, that you have fallen to such a degree of weakness that
he can persuade you that you have been entertaining Persuasion herself
in your city, and not a vile slanderer. And when at the conclusion of
his argument he calls upon his partners in bribe-taking, then fancy that
you see upon these steps, from which I now address you, the benefactors
of your State arrayed against the insolence of those men. Solon, who
adorned our commonwealth with most noble laws, a man who loved wisdom, a
worthy legislator, asking you in dignified and sober manner, as became
his character, not to follow the pleading of Demosthenes rather than
your oaths and laws. Aristides, who assigned to the Greeks their
tributes, to whose daughters after he had died the people gave
portions--imagine Aristides complaining bitterly at the insult to public
justice, and asking if you are not ashamed that when your fathers
banished Arthurias the Zelian, who brought gold from the Medes (although
while he was sojourning in the city and a guest of the people of Athens
they were scarce restrained from killing him, and by proclamation
forbade him the city and any dominion the Athenians had power over),
nevertheless that you are going to crown Demosthenes, who did not indeed
bring gold from th