bred in its midst, nursed by the slave in infancy, followed by him in manhood, looked after by him in age-he may be unwilling to give up the comforts which attend this kind of domestic servitude. But, sir, when we are laying the foundation of empires, the question is not how a few may live in ease, but the question is, how the many shall best live, increase, beautify, and fructify the earth.

DEMOSTHENES

(384-322 B.C.)

HE Oration on the Crown has been called the greatest oration of the world's greatest orator. If it be so, it is because Demosthenes is defending civilization in defending himself as the champion of Athenian autonomy and liberty. The Athens of his day represented all that was highest in intellect, and in the application of intellect to art, to science, to philosophy, to moral force in government. Against it, threatening its overthrow, was the blind desire of empire, the primitive instinct of coercion, the savage pride in dominating the strong and subjugating the weak, represented by Philip and his Macedonians. Athens, a small State, forced to rely almost wholly on intellectual resources, had by virtue of them become the most conspicuous nation in Europe. Athenian diplomacy, the subtle, intangible, all-pervading forces of mind which Demosthenes and his work enable later generations to understand as essentially Attic qualities, influenced not only the policies of Greece, but those of every civilized people in the known world.

The Greece which produced and energized Demosthenes had been itself energized by two great ideas-the ideals of Athens and of Sparta. The one was of grace, the other of strength. The Athenian believed that he ought to develop all his faculties and enjoy them. The Spartan held life useless unless it developed character at the expense of enjoyment. The Athenian was incredibly quick, subtle, æsthetic. The Spartan was strong, simple, self-denying. So opposite in their virtues they had the same fundamental weakness a defective sense of justice. Of the Athenian character as it had reached its logical climax in the time of Demosthenes, Rufus Choate shows a just appreciation when he writes:

"Whether Republics have usually perished from injustice need not be debated. One there was, the most renowned of all, that certainly did so. The injustice practiced by the Athens of the age of Demosthenes upon its citizens, and suffered to be practiced by one another, was as marvelous as the capacities of its dialect, as the eloquence by which its masses were regaled, and swayed this way and that as clouds, as waves,-marvelous as the long banquet of beauty in which they reveled,-as their love of Athens, and their passion for glory. There was not one day in the whole public life of Demosthenes when the fortune, the good name, the civil existence of any considerable man was safer there than it would have been at Constantinople or Cairo

under the very worst forms of Turkish rule. There was a sycophant to accuse, a demagogue to prosecute, a fickle, selfish, necessitous court- -no court at all, only a commission of some hundreds or thousands from the public assembly sitting in the sunshine, directly interested in the cause-to pronounce judgment. And he who rose rich and honored might be flying at night for his life to some Persian or Macedonian outpost, to (die by poison on his way in the Temple of Neptune.»

This is the central truth in the life of Greece as it is in that of the greatest Greek orator and statesman. It must be kept in mind in reading every period of the 'Oration on the Crown,' that then, as always when he spoke on public affairs, the patriot staked fortune, honor, life, on his words. Between Eschines, the rival of Demosthenes, and Demosthenes himself, the issue is always possibly one of life and death-certainly of exile for the loser. But with Demosthenes, it is infinitely higher and broader. He feels that in controling Athens he is moving Greece and the world. He is staking everything for his country and braving for his countrymen the certainty of ingratitude, treachery, and persecution to save them and their civilization from being overcome by encircling and menacing barbarism.

As he came forward to deliver the 'Oration on the Crown,' Demosthenes stood for fruitless patriotism, defeated by the injustice of those it would save. Neither Sparta nor Athens was longer competent to lead Europe. The Macedonians, half Greek, half barbarian, represented the logic of the situation created by the fraud and force of the long struggle for the "hegemony" of Greece. The sovereignty of intellect which Athens might have held against the world was challenged. It was now a question of the Macedonian phalanx against oratory addressed to a people so æsthetic as to be capable of protesting loudly against the use of a grave accent in place of an acute, but with none of that governing public conscience through which alone moral force can exercise itself.

The 'Oration on the Crown' seems to be largely personal and in some measure egotistical, but in defending himself Demosthenes, attacked by the Macedonian party at Athens, feels that he is still defending Athens against Macedon, liberty against Philip, civilization against barbarism. In this feeling he was justified. He had led Athenian opposition to the aggressions of Macedon from the first, and in 338 B. C., when Philip of Macedon so disastrously defeated the Athenians and their allies at Chæronea, Demosthenes, one of the officials in charge of the walls of Athens, had used his own money freely to repair them. After the panic following the battle was over, Ktesiphon, on behalf of the friends of Demosthenes and the opponents of Philip, moved that the orator "should be presented with a golden crown and that a proclamation should be made in the theatre at the great

Dionysian festival, at the performance of the new tragedies, announcing that Demosthenes was rewarded by the people with a golden crown for his integrity, for the good-will which he had invariably displayed towards the Greeks and towards the people of Athens, and also for his magnanimity, and because he had ever both by word and deed promoted the interests of the people and been zealous to do all the good in his power."

Rallying behind Eschines, the Macedonian party attacked Ktesiphon as a means of ruining Demosthenes. They alleged that the measure he proposed was unlawful; first, because it was unlawful to make a false allegation in any public document; second, that it was unlawful to vote a crown to any official who had still a report to make of his official conduct; and third, that the Dionysian festival was not lawfully the place for presenting crowns. Of course, the case turned on the question of whether or not Ktesiphon in moving to crown Demosthenes as a patriot and public benefactor had moved to place a lie in the archives of Athens. Demosthenes was thus put on trial for his Philippics, for his Olynthaics, for all the other orations he had delivered against Philip and the Macedonian movement since he began his crusade twenty years before (351-352 B. C.). After the accusation had been preferred against Ktesiphon, it was allowed to rest seven years (until 330 B. C.). When trial was forced, Philip was dead, and Alexander being at the height of his successes, the cause of Demosthenes seemed hopeless. Nevertheless, all Greece, understanding that the prosecution was not against Ktesiphon, but against Demosthenes as the representative of the old Greek idea of small independent states in friendly alliance, watched the case with breathless interest. When Demosthenes won it, Æschines went into exile, but in 324 Demosthenes was himself exiled by the Macedonian party, and in 322 he took poison to escape death at their hands.

He was born at Pæania, Attica, 384 (385 ?), B. C., and died at Calauria in the Temple of Neptune where he had taken sanctuary from Macedonian pursuit, 322 B. C. He was not a philosopher or an essayist like Cicero, whose all-embracing mind considered nothing in the visible or invisible universe foreign to it. He was a patriot, a statesman, a great thinker, because his sympathies with his country and what it stood for made him so. His style may seem unadorned, but that is merely another way of calling it Attic. Indeed, it was objected by one of his contemporaries that he allowed himself more ornament than the laws of good taste warranted. No one in modern times will make such a complaint of his direct and rapid sentences, compelled as they are by the earnestness of one of the greatest intellects in the history of the world.

THE ORATION ON THE CROWN

(Delivered at Athens, 330 B. C., in Defense of Ktesiphon-from the Translation of Kennedy. Following the plan of the work under which the 'World's Best Orations' are published in full, the 'Oration on the Crown' is given complete, as are also the Second Olynthaic, the Second Philippic, and the 'Oration on the Peace.')

I

BEGIN, men of Athens, by praying to every god and goddess that the same good-will which I have ever cherished toward the commonwealth and all of you, may be requited to me on the present trial. I pray likewise-and this specially concerns yourselves, your religion, and your honor-that the gods. may put it in your minds not to take counsel of my opponent touching the manner in which I am to be heard,- that would indeed be cruel!-but of the laws and of your oath, wherein (besides the other obligations) it is prescribed that you shall hear both sides alike. This means not only that you must pass no pre-condemnation, not only that you must extend your good-will equally to both, but also that you must allow the parties to adopt such order and course of defense as they severally choose and prefer.

Many advantages hath Eschines over me on this trial; and two especially, men of Athens. First, my risk in the contest is not the same. It is assuredly not the same for me to forfeit your regard, as for my adversary not to succeed in his indictment. To me-but I will say nothing untoward at the outset of my address. The prosecution, however, is play to him. My second disadvantage is the natural disposition of mankind to take pleasure in hearing invective and accusation, and to be annoyed by those who praise themselves. To Æschines is assigned the part which gives pleasure; that which (I may fairly say) is offenIsive to all is left for me. And if, to escape from this, I make no mention of what I have done, I shall appear to be without defense against his charges, without proof of my claims to honor; ✓ whereas, if I proceed to give an account of my conduct and measures, I shall be forced to speak frequently of myself. I will endeavor, then, to do so with all becoming modesty; what I am driven to by the necessity of the case will be fairly chargeable to my opponent who has instituted such a prosecution.

I think, men of the jury, you will all agree that I, as well as Ktesiphon, am a party to this proceeding, and that it is a matter