No More Learning

a natural misfortune, from 'which others had suffered as
well as the plaintifi'--only, they had never thought of
going to law about it. The defendant broadly hints
that the plaintiff has an eye to his property, and is
trying to oust him from it by a vexatious action. The
matter in dispute was trifling enough, and the must have been inclined to laugh at the solemnity with
which they were implored to give their best attention
to all the details of the case. "There is no greater
nuisance" (so the defendant begins his pleading) " than
a covetous neighbour, which it has been my lot to
meet with. Callicles has set his heart on my land, and
worries me with litigation. First he got his cousin to
claim it from me, but I defeated that claim. I beseech
you all to hear me with attention--not because I am
any speaker, but that you may learn by the facts how
groundless the action is. " After he has explained the
facts, he asks pathetically what he is to do with the
'water, if he may not drain it off either into the public
road or into private ground. " Surely," he adds, with
a touch of bucolic humour, "the plaintiff won't force
me to drink it up 'Q " The damage done could not have
been very ruinous, if we may judge from a single
specimen. It appears that the mothers of the two
litigants used to visit each other, as country neighbours;
and on one occasion, when the defendant's mother was
calling at the plaintiffs house, she found the family
plunged in the deepest distress, and apparently crushed
by some more than ordinary calamity. It would seem
that the rustic mind then, as now, was peculiarly
sensitive to the most ludicrously trifling loss, and
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? DEMOSTHENES AT THE BAR. 165
delighted in describing it with the most violent exag-
geration. The injured farmer's wife, on this occasion,
pointed with tears to four bushels of barley which had
got wet and were being dried, and to a jar of oil,
which had indeed fallen down, but which was not
damaged. For this they wanted to claim, according to
the defendant, 1000 drachms, or about ? 40, by way of
compensation. An Attic farmer, it would seem (like
his English representative), was not likely to suffer
from asking too little. There is something very
characteristic in the following remark, which Demos-
thenes' client makes about his opponent: "In going
to law with me," he says, " I hold the plaintiif to be
thoroughly wicked and infatuated. "
In another * somewhat interesting case, Demosthenes
pleads for an unfortunate man who had been ejected
from his township, and was thereby in danger of ceasing
_ to be an Athenian citizen. At Athens, citizenship was
the subject of the strictest scrutiny; and the registers of
the townships were kept with the utmost care. Every
citizen, as has been already noted, had to be twice
registered; and to insure accuracy, and to exclude
questionable persons, the lists were from time to time
revised. Even with all these precautions, cases of
disputed citizenship not unfrequently occurred. In
the case which we are about to consider, Demosthenes'
client had been struck off the register of his township
on the occasion of a revision. The man's father had
been taken prisoner during the latter part of the Pelo-
ponnesian War ; and having lived some years "in for-
* Speech against Eubulides.
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? 166 ' DEMOSTHE mas
sign parts," he spoke Attic rather indifierently. How-
ever, on his return to Athens, he had resumed his
citizenship; and transmitted it, without question, as
it is alleged, to his son. He was very poor, and he
and his wife had to eke out a livelihood by the
humblest of occupations. His son, it seems, had
made enemies in his parish, and among them one
Eubulides, against whom he had given evidence in a
court of justice. Eubulides, when he became mayor
of the township, had the registers revised, and con-
trived to get the man's name struck off. He managed
this by a sort of trick. The revision of the register
took place at Athens, from which the township was
about five miles distant. A good deal of time was
wasted in making speeches and drawing up resolu-
tions ; and the case of Demosthenes' client was taken
last of all. It was now dark, and all but about thirty
members of the township had gone home--and these,
it is said, were in the interest of Eubulides. When
the poor man's name was called, Eubulides started to
his feet, assailed him with a volley of abuse, and
insisted on a vote of expulsion. It was useless to ask
for an adjournment ; the business was hurried through,
and sixty ballot-balls were found in the box against
him, though it seems that only thirty townsmen were
present. The result was utter ruin to the man. Loss
of citizenship meant social death, and probably slavery.
He makes through his counsel a piteous appeal to the
jury, and says that if their verdict is adverse he shall
commit suicide, that he may at least have the satis-
faction of being buried by his relatives in his native
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? DEMOSTHENES AT THE BAR. 167
country. " I have been shamefully treated by this
Eubulides "--so he begins ; " and I pray you, consider-
ing the great importance of the present trial, and the
disgrace and ruin which attend conviction, to hear me,
as you have my opponent, in silence. " Further on in
his speech he touches on his poverty, and the humble
way in which his family maintain themselves.
" We confess that we sell ribbons, and live not in the
way we could wish. We are so low down in the world
that our opponent may go out of his way to abuse us.
It seems to me that our traflicking in the marketplace
is the strongest proof of the falsity of this man's
Charges. My mother, he says, sold ribbons in the
marketplace. Well, if she was an alien, they should
have inspected the market tolls, and shown whether
she paid the alien's toll, and to what country she
belonged. If she was a slave, the person who bought
her, or the person who sold her, should have been
called to give evidence. Then he has said she was a
nurse. We do not deny she was, in those evil days*
when all our people were badly off. But you will find
many women who are citizens taking children to nurse.
Of course, if we had been rich, we should not have
sold ribbons, or have been at all in distress. But
what has that to do with my descent'! Pray do not
scorn the poor (their poverty is a sufficient misfortune
for them), much less those who try to get an honest
livelihood. Poverty compels free men to do many
mean and servile acts, for which they deserve to be
" The last years of the Peloponnesian War.
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? 168 DEMOS THENES.
pitied rather than to be ruined. They tell me that many
women, citizens by birth, have become both nurses
and wool-dressers and vintagers, owing to the misfor-
tunes of our country at that period. I have confidence
in my case, and I come as an appellant to your tribunal
for protection. I know that the courts of law are
more powerful not only than my fellow-townsmen,
but even than the Council of the popular Assembly;
and justly so--for your verdicts are in every respect
most righteous. "
He concludes his address to the jury with the threat
of suicide already mentioned
One more of these cases must suffice. It is
an amusing one--an action, as we should say, for
assault and battery. There were, it seems, occasional
outbursts of rowdyism even at refined Athens, and the
police were not always " on the spot" to repress them.
Some of the "fast" young men about town formed
themselves into clubs--like the " Mohock Club" of the
last century, whose lawless proceedings are the subject
of one of the numbers of the ' Spectator. ' * " Ari
outrageous ambition (as the ' Spectator' says) of doing
all possible hurt to their fellow-creatures was the great
cement of their assemblies, and the only qualification
required in the members. " There was a club at Athens
which called itself the Triballi, the name of one of the
wildest and most savage tribes of Thrace. The mem-
bers of this delightful fraternity used to commit all
manner of horrid and indecent outrages on inoffensive
* No. 324.
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? DEMOSTIIENES AT THE BAR. 169
citizens as they were taking the evening air or return-
ing home from parties. One Conon and his sons
specially distinguished themselves. Their victim on
one occasion retained Demosthenes for his counsel.
They had all been on foreign military service together,
and it was then that the practical jokes and annoy-
ances were begun of which Demosthenes' client com-
plains. Conon and his set would drink all day after
lunch; and so by dinner-time they were only fit for
drunken frolics. " At first," the plaintiff says, " they
played tricks on his servants; at last on himself and
his party. They would pretend that our servants
annoyed them with smoke in cooking, and were saucy;
then they beat them, and played all sorts of dirty,
brutal jokes on them. We expressed our disgust;
and when they insulted us, we all went in a body to
the general, who gave them a severe reprimand. " In
this manner a very sore feeling grew up ; and when
they all returned to Athens, the assault took place
which was the ground of the action.
"When I had got back to Athens," the plaintiff
says, "I was taking a walk one evening in the
market-place with a friend of my own age, when
Ctesias, Conon's son, passed us, very much intoxi-
cated. Seeing us, he made an exclamation like
a drunken man muttering something indistinctly
to himself, and went on his way. There was a
drinking-party near, at the house of Pamphilus,
the fuller. Conon and many others were there.
Ctesias got them to leave the party and go with him
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? 170 DEMOSTHENES. '
to the marketplace. We were near the Leocorium"
(a small temple) "when we encountered them. As we
came up, one of them rushed on my friend and held
him. Conon and another tripped up my heels, and
threw me into the mud, and jumped on me, and
kicked me with such violence that my lip was cut
through and my eye closed up. In this plight they
left me, unable to rise or speak. As I lay I heard
them use dreadful language, some of which I should
be sorry to repeat to you. One thing you shall hear.
It proves Conon's malice, and that he was the ring-
leader in the affair. He crowed, mimicking fighting-
cocks when they have won a battle ; and his companions
bade him clap his elbows against his sides, like wings.
I was afterwards found by some persons who came
that way, and carried home without my cloak, which
these men had carried off. When they got to the
door, my mother and the maid-servants began crying
and bewailing. I was carried with some difficulty to
a bath; they washed me all over, and then showed me
to the doctor. " ' '
It seems to have struck Demosthenes that possibly
some of the jury would be inclined to laugh at this
somewhat ludicrously pathetic picture.
"Will you laugh," he makes his client say, "and
let Conon off, because he says we are a band of merry
fellows who, in our adventures and amours, strike and
break the neck of any one we please' ! I trust
not. None of you would have laughed if you had
been present when I was dragged and stripped and
kicked, and carried to the home which 'I had left
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? DEMOSTHENES AT _THE BAR. 171'
strong and well ; and my mother rushed out, and the
women cried and wailed as if a man had died in the
house, so that some of the neighbours sent to ask what
was the matter. "
Conon and his associates may well have been a
terror to peaceable citizens, if we may trust the fol-
lowing little sketch of their proceedings :--
"Many of you know the set. There's the grey-
headed man, who all day long has a solemn frown on
his brows, and wears a coarse mantle and singlesoled
'shoes. ' But when they get together, they stick at no
wickedness or disgraceful conduct. These are their
fine and spirited sayings: ' Shan't we bear witness for
one another'! ' 'Doesn't it become friends and com-
rades 'l' ' What will he bring against you that you're
afraid of'! ' ' Some men say they saw him beaten'! '
We'H say, 'You never touched him. ' 'Stripped of
his coat'! ' We'll say, 'They began. ' 'His lip was
sewed up'! ' VVe'll say, 'Your head was broken. '
Remember," solemnly adds the plaintiff, "I pro-
duce medical evidence ; they do not--for they can get
no evidence against me but what is fmnished by
themselves. "
It is to be hoped that the jury did not laugh, but
were persuaded by Demosthenes to make an example
of such offenders. Blackguardism could hardly go
further than to rob a man of his cloak, in addition to
beating and kicking him. The Athenian rowdy, if
Conon and his set were fair and average types of the
genus, certainly deserved little mercy.
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? CONCLUSION.
' Dsnosrnmrss is one of those men concerning whom,
both as a statesman and an orator, there cannot be
much difference of opinion. As a statesman, he is
unanimously eulogised by modern historians of the
first rank--such as Thirlwall, Grote, and Curtius. Every
one who sees anything to esteem and admire in old
Greek life, must esteem and admire Demosthenes. His
political career was a consistent one. He clung to and
worked for one idea. That idea was a free and inde-
pendent Greece, of which his own Athens had, morally
and intellectually, the right to be head. It was not,
as we have seen, the view of Isocrates; nor was it after-
wards that of the historian Polybius. Both these men
refused to believe that Greece could any longer be
what she had been. Both were honest and con-
scientious thinkers; but we can never have quite the
same feeling towards the man who is inclined to
' despair of a great cause as we have towards him who
will persist in hoping against hope. _It was this which
Demosthenes did through life amid many discourage-
mcnts ; and this gives him a moral greatness which we
' believe posterity will always recognise. Such a man
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? C0'NUL USION. ' 173
would be sure in his public speeches to appeal to con-
science, to the moral sense, and to a lofty patriotism.
The appeals may have often fallen dead ; but he could
not help believing that there was still a spirit in his
countrymen which, if rightly invoked, might yet be
roused, and stir them to the deeds of their forefathers.
This was the faith of Demosthenes.
This it was which
made him dislike and distrust even the noble specula-
tions and philosophy of Plato. These, he felt--as many
an Englishman might have fe1t--would tend to carry
Athenians away from the practical sphere of politics
into a shadowy realm of ideas. Athens, he thought,
ought still to assert her greatness and dignity, and he
had something in regard to_ her of the feeling which
Yirgil has expressed in the well-known line---
" Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento. " *
As an orator he has, almost without question, been
unrivalled. Lord Brougham, in his dissertation on the '
oratory of the ancients, confidently pronounces this
opinion, and we are not aware that there is or has been
any dissent from it. His eloquence was the joint pro-
duct of natural genius and elaborate study. Quintilian
says, on the whole truly, that Cicero owed more to
study, and Demosthenes to nature. Still, as we have
seen, Demosthenes did his best to perfect his great
natural gifts by the most assiduous application. His
industry was prodigious. He left behind him a
collection of ezordia, or introductions to speeches,
which it seems that Cicero had by him. He was con-
tinually revising his words and phrases. All his
"' " Thine, Roman, be the claim to rule the world. " '
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? 174 DEMOSTHE. 'NES.
speeches, as far as we know, were the result of careful
preparation. His speaking exhibited great varieties.
His opponent is often scathed with an eloquence not
unlike that of the late Lord Derby, when his
words Were inspired by a strong moral indignation.
Some of his speeches remind us of the subtle and
ingenious reasoning of Mr Gladstone. Such is the
speech we have noticed, in which he argues for the
repeal of the law of Leptines. In others, again--the
Olynthiac orations especially, and that for the Crown
against Aischines--we have passages which recall to our
memories the impassioned fervour of some of the most
eloquent speeches of Mr Bright. There is the same
impressive appeal to the human conscience, and to the
worth and grandeur of freedom. At the same time,
he was a most dexterous master of his art. James
Mill used to point out to his famous son "how, first,
Demosthenes said everything important to his purpose
at the exact moment when he had brought the minds
of his hearers into the state most fitted to receive it;
second, how he insinuated, gradually and indirectly,
ideas which would have roused opposition if directly
presented. " Generally, he was a thoroughly success-
ful speaker, winning many a triumph in the Assembly
and the law court, and finally discomfiting his able
rival. And it must indeed have been an inspiriting
recollection to him when he looked back to Chaeroneia,
where, thanks to his eloquence, Athenians and Thebans
fought side by side in the cause of Greece.
END OF DEMOSTHENES.
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