9.4
However, those orations which were spoken off-hand by him had more courage and boldness than those which he wrote out, if we are to put any confidence in Eratosthenes, Demetrius the Phalerian, and the comic poets. Of these, Eratosthenes says that often in his speeches Demosthenes was like one frenzied, and the Phalerean says that once, as if under inspiration, he swore the famous metrical oath to the people:— By earth, by springs, by rivers, and by streams. Kock, Com. Att. Frag. ii. p. 128. From Plutarch’s Morals, p. 845b, it is to be inferred rather that this was a verse of Antiphanes ridiculing the perceived manner of Demosthenes.
9.5
Of the comic poets, one calls him a rhopoperperethras, or trumpery-braggart,Kock, op.cit., iii. p. 461. and another, ridiculing his use of the antithesis, says this:— (First slave) My master, as he took, retook. (Second slave (?)) Demosthenes would have been delighted to take over this phrase. Kock, op. cit., ii. p. 80. A verse precedes which may be translated: My master on receiving all his patrimony, and the point apparently is that the heir took what was a gift as his rightful due. Unless, indeed, this, too, was a jest of Antiphanes upon the speech of Demosthenes concerning Halonnesus, Or. vii., wrongly attributed to Demosthenes. There is in § 5 a phrase similar to the one under comment. in which the orator counselled the Athenians not to take the island from Philip, but to retake it.
10.1
Still, all men used to agree that Demades, in the exercise of his natural gifts, was invincible, and that when he spoke on the spur of the moment he surpassed the studied preparations of Demosthenes. And Ariston the Chian records an opinion which Theophrastus also passed upon the two orators. When he was asked, namely, what sort of an orator he thought Demosthenes was, he replied: Worthy of the city;
