Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 1.djvu/302

 THE WORLD'S FAMOUS ORATIONS to boast of his great actions, from cooperating with such men, that he instantly infected them with the contagion of his unhappy conduct.

Is it not scandalous, Athenians! that your opinion of the guilt of Demosthenes should depend only on our representations? Do you not know that he is a corrupted traitor, a public robber, false to his friends, and a disgrace to the state? What decrees, what laws have not been made subservient to his gain? There are men in this tribunal who were of the Three Hundred when he proposed the law relative to our trierarchs. Inform those who stand near you how, for a bribe of three talents, he altered and new-modeled this law in every assembly; and, just as he was feed, inserted or erased clauses. Say, in the name of Heaven! think ye, O men of Athens! that he gained nothing by his decree which gave Diphilus the honors of public maintenance and a statue? Was he not paid for obtaining the freedom of our city to Chærephilus, and Phidon, and Pamphilus, and Philip, and such mean persons as Epigenes and Conon? Was it for nothing he procured brazen statues to Berisades and Satyrus, and Gorgippus, those detested tyrants, from whom he annually receives a thousand bushels of corn, altho he is ready to lament the distresses of his fortune? Was it for nothing he made Taurosthenes an Athenian citizen, who enslaved his countrymen, and, together with his brother Callias, betrayed all Eubœa to Philip? whom our laws forbid to appear in Athens on