if you look at his character and at the facts. I will help you
to estimate the characteristics which ought to be found in a friend
of the constitution; in a sober-minded citizen. I will oppose to
them the character that may be looked for in an unprincipled
revolutionist. Then you shall draw your comparison and consider on
which part he stands--not in his language, remember, but in his
life. Now all, I think, will allow that these attributes should
belong to a friend of the constitution: First, that he should be of
free descent by both parents so that the disadvantage of birth may
not embitter him against those laws which preserve the democracy.
Second, that he should be able to show that some benefit has been
done to the people by his ancestors; or, at the worst, that there
had been no enmity between them which would prompt him to revenge
the misfortunes of his fathers on the State. Third, he should be
virtuous and temperate in his private life, so that no profligate
expense may lead him into taking bribes to the hurt of the people.
Next, he should be sagacious and able to speak--since our ideal is
that the best course should be chosen by the intelligence and then
commended to his hearers by the trained eloquence of the orator,
--though, if we cannot have both, sagacity must needs take rank
before eloquence. Lastly, he must have a stout heart or he may play
the country false in the crisis of danger or of war. The friend of
oligarchy must be the opposite of all this. I need not repeat the
points. Now, consider: How does Demosthenes answer to these
conditions?

[After accusing Demosthenes of being by parentage half a Scythian,
Greek in nothing but language, the orator proceeds: ]--

In his private life, what is he? The tetrarch sank to rise a
pettifogger, a spendthrift, ruined by his own follies. Then having
got a bad name in this trade, too, by showing his speeches to the
other side, he bounded on the stage of public life, where his
profits out of the city were as enormous as his savings were small.
Now, however, the flood of royal gold has floated his extravagance.
But not even this will suffice. No wealth could ever hold out long
against vice. In a word, he draws his livelihood not from his own
resources but from your dangers. What, however, are his
qualifications in respect to sagacity and to power of speech? A
clever speaker, an evil liver! And what is the result to Athens?
The speeches are fair;