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But ask them why Demosthenes is to be honored. Because he is a taker of bribes? Because he is a coward? Because he deserted his post? And will you in reality be honoring him, or leaving unavenged yourselves and those who died for you in the battle? In imagination see them expostulating against the crowning of this man. When sticks and stones and iron, voiceless and senseless things, fall on any one and kill him, we cast them beyond the borders,This strange custom perpetuated the old feeling of the ceremonial impurity that rested on any man or thing that had shed human blood. and when a man kills himself, the hand that did the deed is buried apart from the body;
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how outrageous, then, fellow citizens, if Demosthenes, who made the motion for that final campaign, and then betrayed the soldiers, is to receive honor from you! So are the dead insulted, and the living are disheartened, when they see that death is the prize of valor, while the memory of it fades away. And, most important of all, the younger men inquire of you after what example they ought to shape their lives.
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For be assured, fellow citizens, it is not our wrestling halls or the schools or our system of liberal studies alone that educate the young, but far more our public proclamations. It is proclaimed in the theater that one is crowned for virtue and nobility and patriotism, a man whose life is shameful and loathsome; a younger man, at sight of that, is corrupted. A man has been punished who is a rascal and libertine—like Ctesiphon; the rest have received instruction. A juror who has cast his vote against honor and justice goes home and proceeds to instruct his son; the boy refuses to obey, and with good reason, and he is surely justified thenceforth in calling exhortation vexation.
