Were the Athenians More Famous in War or in Wisdom? (8)

But the compositions of the poets we may affirm to be but a childish pastime; orators, however, have some claim when compared with generals; wherefore with good reason Aeschines[*] asserts derisively that Demosthenes declares that he will enter a suit for possession on behalf of the Speakers’ Platform against the War Office. Is it, then, right to prefer Hypereides’ Plataean oration to Aristeides’ victory at Plataea? Or Lysias’s speech against the Thirty[*] to Thrasybulus’s and Archinus’s slaughter of those tyrants? Or Aeschines’ oration against Timarchus’s wanton ways to Phocion’s expedition to Byzantium,[*] by which he prevented the sons of Athenian allies from becoming victims of the wantonness and drunken lust of Macedonians? Or with the crowns[*] which the Athenian people in common received when they had given freedom to Greece shall we compare

Demosthenes’ oration On the Crown? For in this speech the orator has made this matter exceedingly perspicuous and intelligible in taking his oath by the memory of those of our ancestors who risked their lives for us at Marathon, [*] not by the teachers who in the schools gave them as youths their early training.

Wherefore the State has given public burial not to men like Isocrates, Antiphon, and Isaeus, but to these men, whose remains she has taken in her embrace; and these men it was that the orator deified in his oath when he swore by men whose example he was not following.[*] But Isocrates, although he had declared[*] that those who had risked their lives at Marathon had fought as though their souls were not their own, and although he had hymned their daring and their contempt of life, himself (so they say), when he was already an old man,[*] replied to someone who asked him how he was getting on, Even as does a man over ninety years of age who considers death the greatest of evils. For he had not grown old sharpening his sword nor whetting his spear-point nor polishing his helmet nor campaigning nor pulling at the oar, but in glueing together and arranging antitheses, balanced clauses, and inflexional similarities, all but smoothing off and proportioning his periods with chisel and file. How could this person do other than fear the clash of arms and the impact of phalanxes, he who feared to let vowel collide with vowel, or to

utter a phrase whose balance was upset by the lack of a single syllable?[*] For Miltiades set forth for Marathon, joined battle the next day, and returned victorious with his army to the city; and Pericles,[*] when he had subdued the Samians in nine months, was prouder of his achievement than was Agamemnon, who captured Troy in the tenth year. But Isocrates consumed almost twelve years in writing his Panegyric [*]; and during this period he took part in no campaigns, nor served on any embassy, nor founded any city, nor was dispatched as commander of a fleet, although this era brought forth countless wars. But while Timotheüs was freeing Euboea, and Chabrias[*] with his fleet was fighting at Naxos, and Iphicrates near Lechaeum was cutting to pieces the Spartan division,[*] and the Athenian people, having liberated every city, bestowed upon Greece equal suffrage with themselves, Isocrates sat at home remodelling a book with mere words, as long a time as sufficed for Pericles to erect the Propylaea and his temples a hundred feet long. Yet Cratinus[*] pokes fun even at Pericles for his slowness in accomplishing his undertakings, and remarks somewhat as follows about his Middle Wall:[*]

Pericles in his talk makes the wall to advance,

By his acts he does nothing to budge it.

But consider the petty spirit of this sophist, which caused the ninth part of his life to be spent on the composition of one speech. Is it, then, greatly worth our while to compare the speeches of the orator Demosthenes with the deeds of Demosthenes the general? To compare the speech Against Conon [*] for assault and battery with Demosthenes’ trophies won at Pylos? To compare the speech directed at Arethusius[*] on the slaves with Demosthenes’ reduction of the Spartans to slavery? The orator’s age when he wrote his speeches against his guardians[*] was the same as that of Alcibiades when he united the Mantineans and Eleans against Sparta.[*] And indeed Demosthenes’ public orations have this wonderful characteristic: in the Philippics he spurs his countrymen on to action and he praises the action of Leptines.[*]