Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 1.djvu/220

 THE WORLD'S FAMOUS ORATIONS by prescription, by many previous judgments on every point, by my never having been convicted of a public offense—and where the country must share, more or less, in the repute of measures which were her own—here it is you have encountered me. See if you are not the people's enemy, while you pretend to be mine!

I am at no loss for materials concerning you and your family, but am in doubt what to mention first—whether how your father Tromes, being servant to Elpias, who kept a reading-school in the temple of Theseus, wore a weight of fetters and a collar; or how your mother, by her morning spousals in the cottage by Hero Calamites, reared up you, the beautiful statue, the eminent third-rate actor!—But all know these things without my telling—Or how the galley-piper Phormio, the slave of Dion of Phrearrii, removed her from that honorable employment. But, by Jupiter and the gods! I fear, in saying what is proper about you, I may be thought to have chosen topics unbecoming to myself. All this therefore, I shall pass by, and commence with the acts of his own life; for indeed he came not of common parents, but of such as are execrated by the people. Very lately—lately do I say?—it is but yesterday that he has become both an Athenian and an orator—adding two syllables, he converted his father from Tromes to Atrometus, and dignified his mother by the name of Glaucothea, who (as every one knows) was called 158