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It is true, however, that derision and ridicule are sometimes proper parts of the statesman’s speech if employed, not as insults or buffoonery, but for needful reproof and disparagement. That sort of thing is most laudable in rejoinders and replies; for when employed of set purpose and without provocation, it makes the speaker appear to be a clown and carries with it a suspicion of malice, such as was attached to the ridicule in the speeches of Cicero, Cato the Elder, and Aristotle’s pupil Euxitheüs, all of whom frequently employed ridicule without previous provocation. But for one who employs it in self-defence the occasion makes it pardonable and at the same time pleasing, as when Demosthenes, in reply to a man who was suspected of being a thief and who mocked him for writing at night, said, I am aware that I offend you by keeping a light burning, and to Demades who shouted, Demosthenes would correct me - the sow correcting Athena, he replied, Yes, your Athena was caught in adultery last year!These two retorts are recorded by Plutarch, Life of Demosthenes, chap. xi. p. 851. The second obviously refers to misconduct on the part of Demades. The sow (teaches or contends with) Athena was a proverbial expression; cf. Theocritus, Idyl, v. 23. As sus (docet) Minervam the proverb was current in Latin; cf. Festus, p. 310 Müller, p. 408 Lindsay; Cicero, Ad Familiares, ix. 18. 3; Academica, i. 4. 18; De Oratore, ii. 57. 233. Witty too was Xenaenetus’s rejoinder to the citizens who reviled him for running away when he was general, Yes, to keep you company, my dears. But in jesting one must guard against going too far and against offending one’s hearers by jesting at the wrong moment or making the speaker appear ignoble and mean-spirited, as Democrates did; for he went up into the assembly and said that he, like the State, had little strength but much bluster, and at the time of the disaster at Chaeroneia he came forward among the people and said, I wish the State had not met with so great a misfortune as to make you listen even to me as adviser, for this remark showed him to be mean-spirited, the other to be crazy, and neither is becoming to a statesman. But in Phocion conciseness of speech was admired. At any rate Polyeuctus declared that Demosthenes was the greatest orator, but Phocion the cleverest in speaking, because his speech contained the most meaning in the fewest words. And Demosthenes, though he despised the other orators, used to say when Phocion rose to speak, The cleaver of my speeches is getting up.
