Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/86

 practice, down to the latest Byzantines, the consent of theorists, orators, antiquarians, anthologists, lexicographers, offered the same unvarying homage to Demosthenes. His work busied commentators such as Xenon, Minucian, Basilicus, vElius Theon, Zosimus of Gaza. Arguments to his speeches were drawn up by rhetoricians so distin guished as Numenius and Libanius. Accomplished men of letters, such as Julius Vestinus and ^Elius Dionysius, selected from his writings choice passages for declamation or perusal, of which fragments are incorporated in the mis cellany of Photiusand the lexicons of Harpocration, Pollux, and Suidas. It might have been anticipated that the purity of a text so widely read and so renowned would, from the earliest times, have been guarded with jealous care. The works of the three great dramatists had been thus protected, about, by a standard Attic recension. But no such good fortune befell the works of Demosthenes. Alexandrian criticism was chiefly occupied with poetry. The titular works of Demosthenes were, indeed, registered, with those of the other orators, in the catalogues (pyropiKol mVa/ces) of Alexandria and Pergamus. But no thorough attempt was made to separate the authentic works from those spurious works which had even then become mingled with them. Philosophical schools which, like the Stoic, felt the ethical interest of Demosthenes, cared little for his language. The rhetoricians who imitated or analyzed his style cared little for the criticism of his text. Their treat ment of it had, indeed, a direct tendency to falsify it, It was customary to indicate by marks those passages which were especially useful for study or imitation. It then became a rhetorical exercise to recast, adapt, or interweave such passages. Sopater, the commentator on Hermogenes, wrote on //.era/JoAai Kat/xeraTrot^crets TWV A^/xoo-^eVovs u&amp;gt;pi.wv, " adaptations or transcripts of passages in Demosthenes." Such manipulation could not but lead to interpolations or confusions in the original text. Great, too, as was the attention bestowed on the thought, sentiment, and style of Demosthenes, comparatively little care was bestowed on. his subject-matter. He was studied more on the moral and the formal side than on the real side. An incorrect sub stitution of one name for another, a reading which gave an impossible date, insertions of spurious laws or decrees, were points which few readers would stop to notice. Hence it resulted that, while Plato, Thucydides, and Demosthenes were the most universally popular of the classical prose- writers, the text of Demosthenes, the most widely used perhaps of all, was also the least pure. His more careful students at length made an effort to arrest the process of corruption. Editions of Demosthenes based on a critical recension, and called A-m/aava (aj/Tty/ocKjka), came to be distinguished from the vulgates, or S^/AWO^IS e^So crei?.

Among the extantmanuscripts of Demosthenes upwards of 170 in number one is far superior, as a whole, to the rest. This is Parisimis 2 2934, of the 10th century. A com parison of this MS. with the extracts of ^Elius, Aristides, and Harpocration from the Third Philippic favours the view that it is derived from an ArTi/aavoV, whereas the S^/xwStts c/cSo- trets, used by Hermogenes and by the rhetoricians generally, have been the chief sources of our other manuscripts. The collation of this manuscript by Immanuel Bekker first placed the textual criticism of Demosthenes on a sound footing. Not only is this manuscript nearly free from interpola tions, but it is the sole voucher for many excellent readings. Among the other MSS., some of the most important are Marcianus 416 F, of the 10th century, the basis of the Aldine edition ; Augustanus I. (N 85), derived from the last, and containing scholia to the speeches on the Crown and the Embassy, by Ulpian, with some by a younger writer, who was perhaps Moschopulus ; Parisinus Y Antverpiensis O the last two comparatively free from addi tions. The fullest authority on the MSS. is Th. Voeinel, Notitia codicum Demosth., and Prolegomena Critica to his edition published at Halle (1856-7), pp. 175-178.

The extant scholia on Demosthenes are for the most part poor. Their staple consists of Byzantine erudition ; and their value depends chiefly on what they have preserved of older criticism. They are better than usual for the Ilepi Sre^avou, Kara Ttyaoxparovs, best for the TLepl TLapaTrpfcr- /?eta9. The Greek commentaries ascribed to Ulpian are especially defective on the historical side, and give little essential aid. Editions : Scholia et Ulpiani commentarii in Demosth., ed. C. Miiller, in Oratt. Att., Par., 1846-7; Scholia Grceca in Demosth. ex codd. aucta et emendata, Oxon, 1851.

1em

{{11fine|{{nowrap|Particular Speeches.—De}} Falsa Lcgatione, R. Shilleto (3d ed.), 1864; G. H. Heslop, 1872. De Corona, A. Holmes, 1871 ; G. A. and W. H. Simcox (with ^Eschines In Ctcsiph.}, 1873. InMidiam t A. Holmes (after Buttmann), 1868 ; Olynthiacs and Philij^ncs, G. H. Heslop, 1868. Select Private Orations [Part I. Contra Phonui- onem, Lacritum, Pantrenetum, Boeotum de Nomine, id. de Dote, Dionysodorum : as to the last two, see list of speeches above. Part II. Pro Phormione, Contra Stephanum I. II., Nicostratuin, Ccnonem, Calliclem], F. A. Paley and J. E. Sandys, Cambridge, 1874-5. Indices to Demosthenes, Reiske, ed. Schafer, Lond. 1823.}|undefined}

1em (R. C. J.)

 DEMOTICA, a town of European Turkey in the province of Adrianople and sanjak of Gallipoli, situated 25 miles south of ths provincial capital, at the foot of a conical hill which rises on the right bank of the Maritza near its junction with the Kizildeki. It is the seat of a Greek archbishop ; and, besides the ancient citadel and palace on the top of the hill, it possesses several Greek churches, a mosque, and public baths. Charles XII. of Sweden resided at Demotica for more than a year after the battle of Pultowa. The town was in great part burned down in 1845.

 DEMPSTER, THOMAS (1579-1625), a Scottish scholar, was born at Cliftbog, Aberdeenshire, and was the twenty- fourth of twenty-nine children of the same mother. From his earliest years he gave promise of the learned attainments which gained him contemporary celebrity and posthumous fame. At a very early age, qualified by the tuition of Thomas Cargill, his classical master in Aberdeen of whom he speaks in his Historia Ecclesiastica as vir literal issimus he entered Pembroke Hall, Cambridge. After having studied there for some time, he went to Paris, but did not continue his studies, on account of a contagious disease which closed the schools and prostrated himself. On his recovery he hastened to Louvain, where he was selected, along with other young Scotchmen, to go to Rome for the furtherance of his education. Through the kindness of Cardinal Cajetan, he became a student in the Roman semi nary ; but he had hardly begun the art of Latin versifica- 