Page:History of Greece Vol XI.djvu/336

 310 HISTORY OF GREECE general lesson of energy and self-reliance, and to remind them of that which the comfort, activity, and peaceful refinement of Athe- nian life, had a constant tendency to put out of sight : That the City, as a whole, could not maintain her security and dignity against enemies, unless each citizen individually, besides his home- duties, were prepared to take his fair share, readily and withou. evasion, of the hardship and cost of personal service abroad. 1 But he had then been called upon to deal (in his discourse De Symmoriis) only with the contingency of Persian hostilities possible indeed, yet neither near nor declared ; he now renews the same exhortation under more pressing exigencies. He has to protect interests already suffering, and to repel dishonorable in- sults, becoming from month to month more frequent, from an in- defatigable enemy. Successive assemblies have been occupied with complaints from sufferers, amidst a sentiment of unwonted chagrin and helplessness among the public yet with no material comfort from the leading and established speakers ; who content themselves with inveighing against the negligence of the merce- naries taken into service by Athens but never paid and with threatening to impeach the generals. The assembly, wearied by repetition of topics promising no improvement for the future, is convoked, probably to hear some farther instance of damage com- mitted by the Macedonian cruisers, when Demosthenes, breaking through the common formalities of precedence, rises first to ad- dress them. It had once been the practice at Athens, that the herald for- mally proclaimed, when a public assembly was opened " Who among the citizens above fifty years old wishes to speak ? and af- ter them, which of the other citizens in his turn ?" 2 Though this old proclamation had fallen into disuse, the habit still remained, that speakers of advanced age and experience rose first after the de- bate had been opened by the presiding magistrates. But the re- lations of Athens with Philip had been so often discussed, that all these men had already delivered their sentiments and exhausted Olynthian war, and yet that nothing is said in it about that war, and next to nothing about Olynthus itself is greater than any of those difficulties which Bohnecke tries to make good against the earlier date. 1 Demosthenes, De Symmor. p. 182. s. 18. ^schines cont. Ktcsiphont. p. 306.