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But as for the writings of the poets, they are mere bubbles. But rhetoricians and orators indeed have some. thing in them that renders them in some measure fit to be compared with great captains. For which reason, Aeschines in derision reports of Demosthenes, that he said he was bringing a suit in behalf of the orator’s stand against the generals’ office.See Aeschines against Ctesiphon, § 146.But for all that, do you think it proper to prefer the Plataic oration of Hyperides to the Plataic victory of Aristides? Or the oration of Lysias against the Thirty Tyrants, to the acts of Thrasybulus and Archias that put them to death? Or that of Aeschines against Timarchus for unchastity, to the relieving of Byzantium by Phocion, by which he prevented the sons of the confederates from being the scorn and derision of the Macedonians? Or shall we set before the public crowns which Demosthenes received for setting Greece at liberty, his oration on the Crown, wherein the rhetorician has behaved himself most splendidly and learnedly, swearing by their progenitors that ventured their lives at Marathon for the liberty of Greece,Demosthenes on the Crown, p. 297, 11.rather than by those that instructed youth in the schools? And therefore the city buried these heroes at the expense of the public, honoring the sacred relics of their bodies, not men like Isocrates, Antiphon, and Isaeus, and the orator has translated them into the number of the Gods; and by these it was that he chose to swear, though he did not follow their example. Isocrates also was wont to say, that they who ventured their lives at Marathon fought as if they had been inspired with other souls than their own; and extolling their daring boldness and contempt of life, to one that asked him (being at that time very aged) how he did,—As well, said he, as one who, being now above fourscore and ten years old, esteems death to be the worst of evils. For neither did he spend his years to old age in whetting his sword, in grinding and sharpening his spear, in scouring and polishing his helmet, in commanding navies and armies, but in knitting and joining together antithetical and equally balanced clauses, and words of similar endings, all but smoothing and adapting his periods and sentences with files, planes, or chisels. How would that man have been affrighted at the clattering of weapons or the routing of a phalanx, who was so afraid of suffering one vowel to clash with another, or to pronounce a sentence where but one syllable was wanting!
