46
But if the island empire and the sea may not save me, I ask my safety from the Posidon at whose altar and under whose sanctuary I-stand. And if Posidon’s power avails not to keep bis temple inviolate, if he scorns not to surrender Demosthenes ta Archias, then welcome death; I will not transfer my worship to Antipater. I might have had Macedonia more at my devotion than Athens, might be now a partaker in your fortunes, if I would have ranged myself with Callimedon, and Pytheas, and Demades. When things were far gone, I might yet have made a shift, if I had not had respect to the daughters of Erechtheus and to Codrus. Fortune might desert, I would not follow her; for death is a haven of safety, which he who reaches will do no baseness more. Archias, I will not be at this late day a stain upon the name of Athens; I will not make choice of slavery; be my winding-sheet the white one of liberty.
47
Sir actor, let me recall to you a fine passage from one of your tragedies: But even at the point of death She forethought took to fall in seemly wise. Euripides, Hecuba. See Polyxena in Notes. She was but a girl; and shall Demosthenes choose an unseemly life before a seemly death, and forget what Xenocrates and Plato have said of immortality? And then he was stirred to some bitter speech upon men puffed up by fortune. What remains to tell? At last, as I now besought and now threatened, mingling the stern and mild, ‘Had I been Archias,’ he said, ‘I had yielded; but seeing that I am Demosthenes, your pardon, good sir, if my nature recoils from baseness.’
