Demosthenes Sentence Examples

The result was a complete victory for Demosthenes.

He was the only son of Dr Philip Francis (c. 1708-1773), a man of some literary celebrity in his time, known by his translations of Horace, Aeschines and Demosthenes.

Thus Demosthenes in his speech "On the crown" accused Aeschines of having "purified the initiated and wiped them clean with (not from) mud and pitch."

He also composed commentaries on the lyric and comic poets and on Thucydides and Demosthenes; part of his commentary on this last author was first published in 1904.

In the 4th century Demosthenes was expounded and imitated by the widely influential teacher, Libanius of Antioch (c. 314c. 393), the pagan preceptor of St Chrysostom.

The principal prose authors were Thucydides, parts of Plato and Demosthenes, with Aristotle, Plutarch's Lives, and, above all, Lucian, who is often imitated in the Byzantine age.

The Greek authors were Homer, Hesiod, Pindar and the dramatists, with Herodotus, Xenophon and Plato, Isocrates and Demosthenes, Plutarch and Arrian.

Greek fell still further into the background; and Homer and Demosthenes The age of g Y g Y iFrenchnfluence.

He was born in the 99th Olympiad in the archonship at Athens of Diotrephes (384-383), three years before Demosthenes.

At the same time, he must have learnt much from other contemporaries at Athens, especially from astronomers such as Eudoxus and Callippus, and from orators such as Isocrates and Demosthenes.

It is far more probable that he was previously composing them at his leisure and in the vigour of manhood, precisely as his contemporary Demosthenes composed all his great speeches except the De Corona before he was fifty.

Spengel, indeed, tries to bring the latest date in the book down to 330; but it is by absurdly supposing that the author could not have got the commonplace, " one ought to criticize not bitterly but gently," except from Demosthenes, De Corona (§ 265).

Thucydides, Sophocles and Herodotus followed in 1502; Xenophon's Hellenics and Euripides in 1503; Demosthenes in 1504.

He was a passionate Ciceronian, and perhaps his chief contributions to scholarship are the corrected editions of Cicero's letters and orations, his own epistles in a Ciceronian style, and his Latin version of Demosthenes.

A revulsion of feeling was completed in 338 by the orator Demosthenes, who persuaded Thebes to join Athens in a final attempt to bar Philip's advance upon Attica.

The time indeed came when Demosthenes and Philip stood face to face as representative antagonists in a mortal conflict.

But, for Demosthenes, the special peril represented by Philip, the peril of subjugation to Macedon, was merely a disastrous accident.

As Demosthenes said to the Athenians, if the Macedonian had not existed, they would have made another Philip for themselves.

The answer which he gave to this question is the key to the life of Demosthenes.

Athens, so Demosthenes held, was the natural head of Greece.

Such, in the belief of Demosthenes, was the part which Athens must perform if Greece was to be safe.

Years before the danger from Macedon was urgent, Demosthenes had begun the work of his life, - the effort to lift the spirit of Athens, to revive the old civic loyalty, to rouse the city into taking that place and performing that part which her own welfare as well as the safety of Greece ca uses.

But the forensic speeches of Demosthenes for public causes are not only political in this general sense.

A forensic speech, composed for a public cause, opens the political career of Demosthenes with a protest against a signal abuse.

In 354 B.C. Demosthenes composed and spoke the oration "Against Leptines," who had effected a slender saving for the state by the expedient of revoking those hereditary exemptions from taxation which had at various times been conferred in recognition of distinguished merit.

This was the first time that the voice of Demosthenes himself had been heard on the public concerns of Athens, and the utterance was a worthy prelude to the career of a statesman.

Demosthenes urges that such an enterprise would at present be useless; that it would fail to unite Greece; that the energies of the city should be reserved for a real emergency; but that, before the city can successfully cope with any war, there must be a better organization of resources, and, first of all, a reform of the navy, which he outlines with characteristic lucidity and precision.

Demosthenes supported Megalopolis.

In the same year Demosthenes wrote the speech "Against Timocrates," to be spoken by the same Diodorus who had before prosecuted Androtion, and who now combated an attempt to screen Androtion and others from the penalties of embezzlement.

Thus, between 355 and 352, Demosthenes had laid down the main lines of his policy.

The First Philippic of Demosthenes was spoken in 35 1 B.C. The Third Philippic - the latest of the extant political speeches - was spoken in 341 B.C. Between these he delivered eight political orations, of which seven are directly concerned with Philip. The whole series falls into two great divisions.

Demosthenes urges that it is time to do something, and to do it with a plan.

Later in the same year Demosthenes did another service to the cause of national freedom.

Demosthenes supported their application in his speech "For the Rhodians."

Demosthenes protested against spending strength, needed for greater objects, on the local quarrels of a despot.

Demosthenes was choragus of his tribe, and was wearing the robe of that sacred office at the great festival in the theatre of Dionysus, when Midias struck him on the face.

The speech "Against Midias" written by Demosthenes for the trial (in 349) was neither spoken nor completed, and remains, as few will regret, a sketch.

The First and Second Olynthiacs of Demosthenes were spoken in that year in support of sending one force to defend Olynthus and another to attack Philip. "Better now than later," is the thought of the First Olynthiac. The Second argues that Philip's strength is overrated.

Men could walk over their sites, Demosthenes said seven years afterwards, without knowing that such cities had existed.

While his opponents had thus suddenly become warlike, Demosthenes had become pacific. He saw that Athens must have time to collect strength.

Eleven envoys, including Philocrates, Aeschines, and Demosthenes, were sent to Philip in February 346 B.C. After a debate at Athens, peace was concluded with Philip in April.

Demosthenes was bent on shutting it against him.

Demosthenes insisted they should be included.

The right of precedence in consultation of the oracle (7rpoyavrEia) was transferred from Athens to Philip. While indignant Athenians were clamouring for the revocation of the peace, Demosthenes upheld it in his speech "On the Peace" in September.

During the eight years between the peace of Philocrates and the battle of Chaeronea, the authority of Demosthenes steadily grew, until it became first predominant and then paramount.

Demosthenes replied in the Second Philippic. "If," he said, "Philip is the friend of Greece, we are doing /ipdic wrong.

The speech "On the Affairs of the Chersonese" and the Third Philippic were the crowning efforts of Demosthenes.

And, in this final crisis, Demosthenes was the embodied energy of Athens.

It was Demosthenes who went to Byzantium, brought the estranged city back to the Athenian alliance, and snatched it from the hands of Philip. It was Demosthenes who, when Philip had already seized Elatea, hurried to Thebes, who by his passionate appeal gained one last chance, the only possible chance, for Greek freedom, who broke down the barrier of an inveterate jealousy, who brought Thebans to fight beside Athenians, and who thus won at the eleventh hour a victory for the spirit of loyal union which took away at least one bitterness from the unspeakable calamity of Chaeronea.

But the work of Demosthenes was not closed by the ruin of his cause.

Already, in 336, Ctesiphon had proposed that Demosthenes should receive a golden crown from the state, and that his extraordinary merits should be proclaimed in the theatre at the Great Dionysia.

Aeschines spoke the speech "Against Ctesiphon," an attack on the whole public life of Demosthenes.

Demosthenes gained an overwhelming victory for himself and for the honour of Athens in the most finished, the most splendid and the most pathetic work of ancient eloquence - the immortal oration "On the Crown."

On the motion of Demosthenes he was warned from the harbours of Attica.

But Demosthenes stood firm.

Demosthenes opposed this.

Demosthenes proposed that the Areopagus should inquire what had become of the other 350.

Demosthenes headed the list of the accused.

Demosthenes was condemned, fined fifty talents, and, in default of payment, imprisoned.

First, that Demosthenes was not bribed by Harpalus.

The hatred of the Macedonian party towards Demosthenes, and the fury of those vehement patriots who cried out that he had betrayed their best opportunity, combined to procure his condemnation, with the help, probably, of some appearances which were against him.

Secondly, it can hardly be questioned that, by withstanding the hot-headed patriots at this juncture, Demosthenes did heroic service to Athens.

Then the voice of Demosthenes, calling Greece to arms, rang out like a trumpet.

De mades moved the decree of the Assembly by which Demosthenes, Hypereides, and some others were condemned to death as traitors.

Parting there from Hypereides and the rest, Demosthenes went on to Calauria, a small island off the coast of Argolis.

Here Demosthenes sought asylum.

Standing before its open door, with his Thracian soldiers around him, he endeavoured to prevail on Demosthenes to quit the holy precinct.

Demosthenes sat silent, with his eyes fixed on the ground.

With these words, Demosthenes withdrew into the inner part of the temple, - still visible, however, from the entrance.

By this time Demosthenes felt that the poison which he had sucked from the pen was beginning to work.

As a statesman, Demosthenes needs no epitaph but his own words in the speech "On the Crown," - I say that, if the event had been manifest to the whole world beforehand, not even then ought Athens to have forsaken this course, if Athens had g f ?

Wherever the noblest expressions of her mind are honoured, wherever the large conceptions of Pericles command the admiration of statesmen, wherever the architect and the sculptor love to dwell on the masterpieces of Ictinus and Pheidias, wherever the spell of ideal beauty or of lofty contemplation is exercised by the creations of Sophocles or of Plato, there it will be remembered that the spirit which wrought in all these would have passed sooner from among men, if it had not been recalled from a trance, which others were content to mistake for the last sleep, by the passionate breath of Demosthenes.

Did the critic, asks Macaulay, ever hear any speaking that was less ornamented than that of Demosthenes, or more diffuse than that of Cicero?

Sincerity and intensity are, indeed, to the modern reader, the most obvious characteristics of Demosthenes.

Where the modern orator would employ a wealth of imagery, or elaborate a picture in exquisite detail, Demosthenes is content with a phrase or a word.

Burke uses, in reference to Hyder Ali, the same image which Demosthenes uses in reference to Philip. "Compounding all the materials of fury, havoc, desolation, into one black cloud, he hung for a while on the declivity of the mountains.

Demosthenes forbears to amplify.

But it is well to remember the charge made against the style of Demosthenes by a contemporary Greek orator, and the defence offered by the best Greek critic of oratory.

Aeschines reproached the diction of Demosthenes with excess of, elaboration and adornment (7reptcpryia).

Dionysius, in reply, admits that Demosthenes does at times depart from simplicity, - that his style is sometimes elaborately ornate and remote from the ordinary usage.

But, he adds, Demosthenes adopts this manner where it is justified by the elevation of his theme.

The remark may serve to remind us of our modern disadvantage for a full appreciation of Demosthenes.

This it was that made Demosthenes unique to the ancients.

Dionysius devoted two special treatises to Demosthenes, - one on his language and style (Xektckos To ros), the other on his treatment of subject-matter (7rpa^y,uaruKinTolros).

The idea which it works out is that Demosthenes has perfected Greek prose by fusing in a glorious harmony the elements which had hitherto belonged to separate types.

The austere dignity of Antiphon, the plain elegance of Lysias, the smooth and balanced finish of that middle or normal character which is represented by Isocrates, have come together in Demosthenes.

Demosthenes has at command all the discursive brilliancy which fascinates a festal audience.

What wonder, then, asks the Greek critic, if the diligence of Demosthenes was no less incessant and minute?

More than half of the sixty-one speeches extant under the name of Demosthenes are certainly or probably spurious.

Demosthenes united and elevated whatever had been best in earlier masters of the Greek idiom.

The writer of the treatise On Sublimity knows 35 1 no heights loftier than those to which Demosthenes 351 has risen.

From his own younger contemporaries, Aristotle and Theophrastus, who founded their theory of rhetoric in large part on his practice, down to the latest Byzantines, the consent of theorists, orators, antiquarians, anthologists, lexicographers, offered the same unvarying homage to Demosthenes.

But no such good fortune befell the works of Demosthenes.

The titular works of Demosthenes were, indeed, registered, with 349 those of the other orators, in the catalogues (pnroptKol irivaees) 343 of Alexandria and Pergamum.

Philosophical schools which, like the Stoic, felt the ethical interest of Demosthenes, cared little for his language.

Sopater, the commentator on Hermogenes, wrote on M€Ta130Xai Kai merairocicr as Twv z j,uoaOivovs Xwpiwv, " adaptations or transcripts of passages in Demosthenes."

Great, too, as was the attention bestowed on the thought, sentiment and style of Demosthenes, comparatively little care was bestowed on his subject-matter.

Hence it resulted that, while Plato, Thucydides and Demosthenes were the most universally popular of the classical prosewriters, the text of Demosthenes, the most widely used perhaps of all, was also the least pure.

Editions of Demosthenes based on a critical recension, and called 'ATTLKCava (avriypac/a), came to be distinguished from the vulgates, or.

The collation of this manuscript by Immanuel Bekker first placed the textual criticism of Demosthenes on a sound footing.

They are valuable as being compiled from Demosthenes himself, or from other classical models.

The ancient fame of Demosthenes as an orator can be compared only with the fame of Homer as a poet.

Cicero, with generous appreciation, recognizes Demosthenes as the standard of perfection.

Vumel, Notitia codicum Demosth., and Prolegomena Critica to his edition published at Halle (1856-1857), pp. 175-178.1 The extant scholia on Demosthenes are for the most part poor.

He is called by Hermogenes 6 xpLetvos Anµoa8 vns, a metaphor taken from barley compared with wheat, or beer compared with wine, - a Demosthenes whose strength is rougher, without flavour or sparkle.

He had, as Demosthenes boasts, an action for outrage like a freeman, and his death at the hand of a stranger was avenged like that of a citizen (Eurip. Hec. 288), whilst, if caused by his master's violence, it had to be atoned for by exile and a religious expiation.

According to Demosthenes he and his three sons received from the Athenians the honour of citizenship. (2) The son of Mithradates III., who reigned c. 266-240 B.C., and was one of those who enlisted the help of the invading Gauls (see Galatia).

The broken and demoralized army, its ranks thinned by fever and sickness, at last began its hopeless retreat, attempting to reach Catania by a circuitous route; but, harassed by the numerous Syracusan cavalry and darters, after a few days of dreadful suffering, it was forced to lay down its arms. The Syracusans sullied the glory of their triumph by putting Nicias and Demosthenes to death, and huddling their prisoners into their stonequarries - a living death, dragged out, for the allies from Greece proper to the space of seventy days, for the Athenians themselves and the Greeks of Sicily and Italy for six months longer.

Athens, to whom Olynthus appealed, sent no adequate forces, in spite of the upbraidings of Demosthenes (see his Olynthiacs), and in the spring of 347 Olynthus fell.

Meanwhile Athens had made overtures for peace (see the De falsa legatione of Demosthenes), and when Philip, in 346, again moved south, peace was sworn in Thessaly.

In the university of Paris, which was originally opposed to this innovation, the statutes of 1598 prescribed the study of Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, Theocritus, Plato, Demosthenes and Isocrates (as well as the principal Latin classics), and required the production of three exercises in Greek or Latin in each week.

Again, Aristotle's early rhetorical instructions and perhaps writings, as well as his opinion that a collection of proverbs is not worth while, must have been known outside Aristotle's rhetorical school to the orator Cephisodorus, pupil of Isocrates and master of Demosthenes, for him to be able to write in his Replies to Aristotle (E) Ta?s irpos 'Apio-ToM?nv avTCypacais) an admired defence of Isocrates (Dionys.

Demosthenes points out that such adulation is as futile as it is fulsome.

Demosthenes had dreamed the night before that he and Archias were competing for a prize as tragic actors; the house applauded Demosthenes; but his chorus was shabbily equipped, and Archias gained the prize.

Macaulay's ridicule has rescued from oblivion the criticism which pronounced the eloquence of Chatham to be more ornate than that of Demosthenes, and less diffuse than that of Cicero.

Dinarchus wrote, for one or more of these prosecutors, the three speeches which are still extant - Against Demosthenes, Against Aristogeiton, Against Philocles.

In the Harpalus affair, Demosthenes was doubtless innocent, and so, probably, were others of the accused.

Dinarchus had little individual style and imitated by turns Lysias, Hypereides and Demosthenes.

Demosthenes (De corona, p. 313) mentions various ceremonies practised during the celebration of the mysteries of this deity.

He was not taught to compose either in Latin or in Greek, and he was never an exact scholar; it was for the subject matter that he was required to read, and by the age of ten he could read Plato and Demosthenes with ease.

This ideal, when put forward by the consummate eloquence of Demosthenes and other orators, created great enthusiasm among the Athenians, who at times displayed all their old vigour in opposing Philip, notably in the decisive campaign of 338.

On the very next day, however, a second Athenian fleet arrived under Demosthenes and Eurymedon, with seventy-three ships of war and a large force of heavy infantry and light troops.

Demosthenes decided at once to make a grand attack on Epipolae, with a view to recovering the Athenian blockading lines and driving the Syracusans back within the city walls.

The army was now thoroughly out of heart, and Demosthenes was for at once breaking up the camp, embarking the troops, and sailing back to Athens.

His dilatoriness during the second embassy (346) sent to ratify the terms of peace led to his accusation by Demosthenes and Timarchus on a charge of high treason, but he was acquitted as the result of a powerful speech, in which he showed that his accuser Timarchus had, by his immoral conduct, forfeited the right to speak before the people.

In 343 the attack was renewed by Demosthenes in his speech On the False Embassy; Aeschines replied in a speech with the same title and was again acquitted.

By way of revenge, Aeschines endeavoured to fix the blame for these disasters upon Demosthenes.

In 336, when Ctesiphon proposed that his friend Demosthenes should be rewarded with a golden crown for his distinguished services to the state, he was accused by Aeschines of having violated the law in bringing forward the motion.

His three speeches, called by the ancients "the Three Graces," rank next to those of Demosthenes.

And, although Demosthenes is a Cicero.

The story told in the Pro Cluentio may be true or false, but the picture of provincial crime which it presents is vividly dramatic. Had we only known Cicero in his speeches we should have ranked him with Demosthenes as one who had realized the highest literary ideal.

When Philip attacked Perinthus and Byzantium (340), Artaxerxes sent them support, by which they were enabled to withstand the Macedonians; Philip's antagonists in Greece, Demosthenes and his party, hoped to get subsidies from the king, but were disappointed.

In 1494-1515 Aldus Manutius published at Venice no less than twenty-seven editiones principes of Greek authors and of Greek works of reference, the authors including Aristotle, Theophrastus, Theocritus, Aristophanes, Thucydides, Sophocles, Herodotus, Euripides, Demosthenes (and the minor Attic orators), Pindar, Plato and Athenaeus.

The Athenians fully recognized its importance to them, as supplying them with corn and cattle, as securing their commerce, and as guaranteeing them against piracy, for its proximity to the coast of Attica rendered it extremely dangerous to them when in other hands, so that Demosthenes, in the De corona, speaks of a time when the pirates that made it their headquarters so infested the neighbouring sea as to prevent all navigation.

He modestly took his seat on one of the back benches, till Fox brought him forward to a seat near his own, exclaiming, "This is no place for the Irish Demosthenes !"

His eloquence was so remarkable that he was known as "the Welsh Demosthenes."

Greek rhetoric began in the "grand" style; then Lysias set an exquisite pattern of the "plain"; and Demosthenes might be considered as having effected an almost ideal compromise.

Cobden did the reasoning, Bright supplied the declamation, but like Demosthenes he mingled argument with appeal.

More important, though equally ineffective, was the scheme of Demosthenes to march from Naupactus through Aetolia, subduing the wild hill tribes, to Cytinium in Doris (in the upper valleys of the Cephissus) and thence into Boeotia, which was to be attacked simultaneously from Attica.

Demosthenes averted this, and immediately afterwards by superior tactics inflicted a complete defeat at Olpae in Acarnania on Eurylochus at the head of a Spartan and Ambracian force.

Meantime Demosthenes had formed the plan of planting the Messenians of Naupactus in Messenia - now Spartan territory - and obtained permission to accompany the expedition.

Demosthenes was left behind in this fort, and the Spartans promptly withdrew from their annual raid upon Attica and their projected attack on Corcyra to dislodge him.

The comic poets satirized them, and Plato and Demosthenes inveighed against them; but they continued to spread, with all their fervid enthusiasm, their superstition and their obscene practices, wide among the people, whose religious cravings were not satisfied with the purely external religions of Hellenism.

Thomas Wilson, in the epistle prefixed to his translation of the Olynthiacs of Demosthenes (1570), has a long and most interesting eulogy of Cheke; and Thomas Nash, in To the Gentlemen Students, prefixed to Robert Greene's Menaphon (1589), calls him "the Exchequer of eloquence, Sir Ihon Cheke, a man of men, supernaturally traded in all tongues."

He also translated several Greek works, and lectured admirably upon Demosthenes.

There was also a tradition that Demosthenes was one of his pupils.

Whereas, when sophistry began, prose composition was hardly practised in central Greece, the sophists were still the leaders in literature and oratory when Plato wrote the Republic, and they had hardly lost their position when Demosthenes delivered the Philippics.

Demosthenes was especially fond of the cretic. Rhythm pervades the whole sentence but is most important at the end or clausula, where the swell of the period sinks to rest.

Other minor works written in later life, such as the Partitiones Oratoriae, a catechism of rhetoric, in which instruction is given by Cicero to his son Marcus; the Topica, and an introduction to a translation of the speeches delivered by Demosthenes and Aeschines for and against Ctesiphon, styled de optimo genere oratorum, also need only be mentioned.

Athenian statesmanship in the time of Demosthenes was gravely exercised to make this form of contribution more effective.

He also brought out the editio princeps of the speeches of Hypereides Against Demosthenes (1850), On Behalf of Lycophron and Euxenippus (1853), and his Funeral Oration (1858).

Pseudonymous epistles were especially numerous under the early Roman empire, and mainly attached themselves to the names of Plato, Demosthenes, Aristotle and Cicero.

The picture drawn may be a caricature, or a misrepresentation of the fact - as that of the father of Demosthenes, " blear-eyed with the soot of the glowing mass," &c. - but it is, with rare exceptions, realistically conceived, and it is brought before us with the vivid touches of a Defoe or a Swift, or of the great pictorial satirist of the 18th century, Hogarth.

There is evidence that he was an extensively read, if not a minutely accurate classical scholar; and it is interesting to know that Demosthenes was his favourite author, and that he diligently cultivated the faculty of expression by the practice of translation and re-translation.

With them was the general, Demosthenes, who landed at Coryphasium with a body of Athenian troops and hastily fortified it.

A truce was concluded, but peace negotiations were defeated by Cleon, who was himself appointed to conduct operations with Demosthenes.

The supporters of Charidemus represented this as due to his efforts, and, in spite of the opposition of Demosthenes, he was honoured with a golden crown and the franchise of the city.

Soon after the death of Demosthenes in 322, resenting the Macedonian influence then dominant at Athens, Xenocrates declined the citizenship offered to him at the instance of Phocion, and, being unable to pay the tax levied upon resident aliens, was, it is said, sold, or on the point of being sold, into slavery.

Here Demosthenes took sanctuary with "gracious Poseidon," and, when this threatened to fail him, sought death.

As models of Attic style Phrynichus assigned the highest place to Plato, Demosthenes and Aeschines the Socratic. The work was learned, but prolix and garrulous.

On these grounds the adversaries of Demosthenes, in after-days, used absurdly to taunt him with a traitorous or barbarian ancestry.

Demosthenes was born then, to a handsome, though not a great fortune.

But his guardians - two nephews of his father, Aphobus and Demophon, and one Therippides - abused their trust, and handed over to Demosthenes, when he came of age, rather less than one-seventh of his patrimony, perhaps between £50 and £60 a year.

Demosthenes, after studying with Isaeus - then the great master of forensic eloquence and of Attic law, especially in will cases 1 - brought an action against Aphobus, and gained a verdict for about £2400.

Biographers have delighted to relate how painfully Demosthenes made himself a tolerable speaker, - how, with pebbles in his mouth, he tried his lungs against the waves, how he declaimed as he ran up hill, how he shut himself up in a cell, having first guarded himself against a longing for the haunts of men by shaving one side of his head, how he wrote out Thucydides eight times, how he was derided by the Assembly and encouraged by a judicious actor who met him moping about the Peiraeus.

The political career of Demosthenes, from his first direct contact with public affairs in 355 B.C. to his death in 322, has an essential unity.