172
Here he married a woman who was rich, I grant you, and brought him a big dowry, but a Scythian by blood. This wife bore him two daughters, whom he sent hither with plenty of money. One he married to a man whom I will not name—for I do not care to incur the enmity of many persons,—the other, in contempt of the laws of the city,In 451/0 Pericles carried a measure which excluded from citizenship all who could not show pure Athenian blood through both parents. By the close of the Peloponnesian war this restriction had fallen into neglect, and in 403 the restored democracy passed an enactment excluding from citizenship children born of a foreign mother after that date. If Demosthenes’ mother was born of a Thracian mother and after 403 (neither fact is certain), she could not bear legitimate children to her Athenian husband. Demosthenes of Paeania took to wife. She it was who bore your busy-body and informer. From his grandfather, therefore, he would inherit enmity toward the people, for you condemned his ancestors to death and by his mother’s blood he would be a Scythian, a Greek-tongued barbarian—so that his knavery, too, is no product of our soil.
173
But in daily life what is he? From being a trierarch he suddenly came forward as a hired writer of speeches,For To be a trierarch implied that a man was in comfortable circumstances. He sank as a trierarch to rise as a pettifogger. (Simcox.) when he had disreputably squandered his patrimony. But when he had lost his reputation even in this profession, for he disclosed his clients’ arguments to their opponents, he vaulted on to the political platform. And though he made enormous profits out of politics, he laid up next to nothing. It is true that just now the Persian’s gold has floated his extravagance, but even that will not suffice, for no wealth ever yet kept up with a debauched character. And to sum it all up, he supplies his wants, not from his private income, but from your perils.
