Page:Plutarch's Lives (Clough, v.5, 1865).djvu/17

 DEMOSTHENES. 9 And he would affirm, that it was the more truly popular act to use premeditation, such preparation being a kind of respect to the people ; whereas, to shght and take no care how what is said is likely to be received by the audience, shows something of an oligarchical temper, and is the course of one that intends force rather than persua- sion. Of his want of courage and assurance to speak off- hand, they make it also another argument, that when he was at a loss, and discomposed, Demades woidd often rise up on the sudden to support him, but he was never ob- served to do the same for Demades. Whence then, may some say, was it, that ^jEschines speaks of him as a person so much to be wondered at for his boldness in speaking ? Or, how could it be, when Python, the B3-zantine, " with so much confidence and such a torrent of words inveighed against " * the Athe- nians, that Demosthenes alone stood up to oppose him ? Or, when Lamachus, the Myrinaean, had written a pane- gyric upon king PhUip and Alexander, in which he uttered many things in reproach of the Thebans and Olynthiaus, and at the Olympic Games recited it publicly, how was it, that he, rising up, and recounting historically and demonstratively what benefits and advantages all Greece had received from the Thebans and Chalcidians, and on the contrary, what mischiefs the flatterers of the Macedonians had brought upon it, so turned the minds of all that were present that the sophist, in alarm at the outcry against him, secretly made his way out of the assembly ? But Demosthenes, it should seem, regarded other pomts in the character of Pericles to be unsuited to him ; but his reserve and his sustained manner, and his forbearing to speak on the sudden, or upon every occa- sion, as being the things to which principally he owed his • These are his own words, quoted from the Oration on the Crown.