Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 1.djvu/235

 DEMOSTHENES scaped, and better I have found"; priding yourself that no one ever howled so lustily—and I believe him! for don't suppose that he who speaks so loud is not a splendid howler! In the daytime you led your noble orgiasts, crowned with fennel and poplar, through the highways, squeezing the big-cheekod serpents, and lifting them over your head, and shouting Evœ Sabœ, and capering to the words Hyes Attes, Attes Hyes, saluted by the beldames as Leader, Conductor. Chest-bearer, Fan-bearer, and the like, getting as your reward tarts and biscuits and rolls: for which any man might well bless himself and his fortune!

When you were enrolled among your fellow townsmen—by what means I stop not to inquire—when you were enrolled, however, you immediately selected the most honorable of employments, that of clerk and assistant to our petty magistrates. From this you were removed after a while, having done yourself all that you charge others with: and then, sure enough you disgraced not your antecedents by your subsequent life, but hiring yourself to those ranting players, as they were called, Simylus and Socrates, you acted third parts, collecting figs and grapes and olives like a fruiterer from other men's farms, and getting more from them than from the playing, in which the lives of your whole company were at stake; for there was an implacable and incessant war between them and the audience, from whom you received so many wounds, that 173