30.4
except that Demochares the relative of Demosthenes says that in his opinion it was not due to poison, but to the honour and kindly favour shown him by the gods, that he was rescued from the cruelty of the Macedonians by a speedy and painless death. And he died on the sixteenth of the month Pyanepsion, the most gloomy day of the Thesmophoria,An annual festival in honour of Demeter and Persephone. which the women observe by fasting in the temple of the goddess.
30.5
It was to this man, a little while after his death, that the Athenian people paid worthy honour by erecting his statueThis statue, the work of Polyeuctus, was erected in 280-279 B.C., on motion of Demochares, a nephew of Demosthenes. The well-known marble statue of Demosthenes in the Vatican is thought to be a copy of it. See Pausanias i. 8, 2, with Frazer’s notes. in bronze, and by decreeing that the eldest of his house should have public maintenance in the prytaneium. And this celebrated inscription was inscribed upon the pedestal of his statue:— If thy strength had only been equal to thy purposes, Demosthenes, Never would the Greeks have been ruled by a Macedonian Ares. Of course those who say that Demosthenes himself composed these lines in Calauria, as he was about to put the poison to his lips, talk utter nonsense.
31.1
Now, a short time before I took up my abode in Athens, the following incident is said to have occurred. A soldier who had been called to an account by his commander, put what little gold he had into the hands of this statue of Demosthenes. It stood with its fingers interlaced, and hard by grew a small plane-tree.
