No More Learning

In defending himself he attacks his rival, and de-
nounces him as really the author of the calamities
which had fallen on the Greek world. It was '
through the diplomacy of Zfischines, he declares, that
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? DEMOSTHENES AND ESOHINES. 141
Philip was admitted to Thermopylae, the beginning of
all the subsequent mischief. If it was dreadful to
think of Greece being under a foreign master, it was a
glorious fact that Athens had done her best to avert
such a disgrace.
This is the drift and purport of the great speech on
the Crown, as it is usually called. It has been well
described by Mr Grote as "a funeral oration on ex-
tinct Athenian and Grecian freedom," " It breathes,"
says Dr Thirlwall, "the spirit of that high philosophy
which, whether learnt in the schools or from life, has
consoled the noblest of our kind in prisons and on
scaffolds, and under every persecution of adverse
fortune, but in the tone necessary to impress a mixed
multitude with a like feeling, and to elevate it for a
while into a sphere above its own. "
Some passages from this oration have already been
quoted in the preceding chapter; and it is due to'
the reader to give him some further specimens of,
perhaps, the greatest of all the oratorical efforts of
Demosthenes.
Here is a passage in which the speaker dwells on the
generous and magnanimous temper of his countrymen
in their best days :--
" Let me for a moment bring before your eyes one
or two of the brightest passages in the history of our
times. Lacedaamon was paramount by sea and land;
she had a belt of garrisons about the frontiers of our
territory; Euboea, Tanagra, all Boeotia, Megara, Zligina,
Cleonae, every island on the coast. We had neither
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? 142 ' DEMOSTHENES.
ships nor walls; we were in no want (had we chosen
to remember the Decelean war) of grievances either
against Corinth or Thebes. And yet the arms of
Athens were seen at Haliartus, and in a few days after
at Corinth. You had something better to do than to
recall the injuries of the past. . . .
" The sacrifice in either case was not made for a
benefactor, neither was it made without risk. You held
that no reason for abandoning to their fate men who
had thrown themselves on your compassion. Honour
and renown were a sufficient motive to lead youti/nto
danger,/and who shall say you were wrong' ! Life must
cease; death must come at some time, though one
should steal into a collar to avoid him. The brave are
ever ready to set forth on the path of glory, armed
with high hope and courage, prepared to accept with-
out a murmur the fate which heaven may ordain. Thus
did your forefathers; thus did the elders among your-
selves, who interposed and frustrated the attempts of
the Thebans after their victory at Leuctra to destroy
Sparta, though from Sparta you had experienced neither
friendship nor good offices, but many grievous wrongs.
You neither quailed before the power and renown which
Thebes then possessed, nor were you deterred by any
thought of your past treatment by Sparta. Thus did
you proclaim to all the Greeks, that how much soever
any of them may offend against you, you reserve your
resentment for other occasions ; but that if danger
threaten their existence or their liberties, you will
take no account of--you will not even remember--your
Wrongs. " '
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? DEMOSTHENES AND 1ESCHINE& 143
This is his answer to those who persisted in saying
that it was Philip--Philip alone--who had brought all
their troubles on them :---
" Do not go about repeating that Greece owes all her
misfortunes to one man. No, not to one man, but to
many abandoned men distributed throughout the differ-
ent states, of whom, by earth and heaven, Z. Eschines is
one. If the truth were to be spoken without reserve,
I should not hesitate to call him the common scourge
of all the men, the districts, and the cities which have
perished; for the sower of the seed is answerable for
the crop. I am astonished you did not turn your faces
from him the moment you beheld him; but thick dark-
ness would seem to veil your eyes. "
He maintains'that the action of the State had been
right and honourable, though it had failed.
" I affirm that if the future had been apparent to us
all--if you, fEschines, had foretold it and proclaimed
it at the top of your voice instead of preserving total
silence,--nevertheless the State ought not to have devi-
ated from her course, if she had regard to her own hon-
our, the traditions of the past, or the judgment of poster-
ity. As it is, she is looked upon as having failed in her
policy,--the common lot of all mankind when such is
the will of heaven ; but if, claiming to be the foremost
state of Greece, she had deserted her post, she would
have incurred the reproach of betraying Greece to Philip.
If we had abandoned without a struggle all which
our forefathers braved every danger to win, who would
not have spurned you, Zlischinesi God forbid that I
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? 144 DEMOSTHENES.
should so speak of the State as of myself. How could
we have looked in the face the strangers who flock
to our city, if things had reached their present pass-
Philip the chosen leader and lord of all--while others
without our assistance had borne the struggle to avert
this consummation! We ! who have never in times
past preferred inglorious safety to peril in the path of
honour. Is there a Greek or a barbarian who does
not know that Thebes at the height of her power, and
Sparta before her--ay, and even the king of Persia
himself --would have been only glad to compromise
with us, and that we might have had what we chose,
and possessed our own in peace, had we been willing
to obey orders and to suffer another to put himself at
the head of Greece! But it was not possible,--it was
not va thing which the Athenians of those days could
do. It was against their nature, their genius, and their
traditions ; and no human persuasion could induce them
to side with a wrong-doer because he was powerful, and
to embrace subjection because it was safe. N 0; to the
last our country has fought and jeopardised herself for
honour and glory and pre-eminence. A noble choice,
in harmony with your national character, as you testify
by your respect for the memories of your ancestors who
have so acted. And you are in the right; for who can
withhold admiration from the heroism of the men who
shrank not from leaving their city and their fatherland,
and embarking in their war-ships, rather than submit to
foreign dictation! VVhy, Themistocles, who counselled
this step, was elected general ; and the man who coun-
selled submission was stoned to death--and not he
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? v
roan osruznvas AND . _/ESCHINES. 145
only, for his wife was stoned by your wives, as he was
by you. The Athenians of those days went not in
quest of an orator or a general who could help them to
prosperous slavery; but they scorned life itself, if it
were not the life of freedom. Each of them regarded
himself as the child not only of his father and of his
mother, but of his country; and what is the difference'!
He who looks on himself as merely the child of his
parents, awaits death in the ordinary course of nature;
while he who looks on himself as the child also of his
country, will be ready to lay down his life rather than
see her enslaved, and will hold death itself less terrible
than the insults and indignities which the citizens of a
state in slavery to the foreigner must endure.
" Do I take credit to myself for having inspired you
with sentiments worthy of your ancestors'! Such pre-
sumption would expose me to the just rebuke of every
man who hears me. What I maintain is, that these
very sentiments are your own ; that the spirit of
Athens was the same before my time,--though I do
claim to have had a share in the application of these
principles to each successive crisis. ZEschines, there-
fore, when he impeaches our whole policy, and seeks
to exasperate you against me as the author of all your
alarms and perils, in his anxiety to deprive me of
present credit, is really labouring to rob you of your
everlasting renown. If by your vote against Ctesiphon
you condemn my policy, you will pronounce yourselves
to have been in the wrong, instead of having suffered
what has befallen you through the cruel injustice of
fortune. But it cannot be: you have not been in the
. s. o. s. s. voL iv. K
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? 146 DEMOSTHENES.
0-
wrong, men of Athens, in doing battle for the freedom'
and salvation of all; I swear it by your forefathers,
who bore the battle's brunt at 'Marathon; by those
who stood in arms at Plataea; by those who fought
the sea-fight at Salamis ; by the heroes of Artemisium,
and many more whose resting-place in our national
monuments attests that, as our country buried, so she
honoured, all alike--victors and vanquished. She
was right; for what brave men could do, all did,
though a higher power was master of their fate. "
This, perhaps, is the most striking of the many
striking passages in this great speech. Demosthenes
carried his audience with him. His rival did not'
obtain a fifth of the votes. His position as an orator
and statesman was destroyed. His discomfiture had'
been witnessed by the whole Greek world. In his'
mortification he left his native city for Rhodes, where
he set up a school of rhetoric. The story was told
that he once declaimed to his pupils the speech
which had driven him into exile; and in reply to
the applause with which it was greeted, exclaimed,
"What 'if you had heard the beast himself speak-
it? "
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? CHAPTER XIII.
LAST DAYS OF DEMOSTHENES.
Dsnosrrrsuss had won a splendid triumph, which he
survived eight years. But they were years by no
means unclouded. They were darkened by an un-
fortunate incident, which we proceed briefly to narrate.
From 330 to 324 13. 0. , we hear nothing of the great
orator. Athens, in fact, had no politics for him to
discuss. He could have had nothing to do but to
advise private clients. By the year 324 Alexander
had returned from that long expedition in which he
had carried his army through the heart of Asia to the
banks of the Indus. He had left behind him one of
his old Macedonian friends in the government of the
rich satrapy of Babylonia. Harpalus (this was the
> man's name) was greedy and extravagant, and wasted
the resources of his province in a luxury which he had
learnt during his residence in the East. It was said
that he loaded his table with the most costly delicacies,
and filled his gardens with exotic plants of every
variety. He had found it convenient to please the
people of Athens by splendid presents, and particu-
larly by very liberal gifts of wheat for free and general
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? 148 DEJIOSTHENES.
distribution. For all this he had received votes of
thanks and been made an Athenian citizen. He was
afraid, however, to face Alexander, who, he well knew,
showed no mercy to delinquent satraps. So he fled
from Asia to Europe with an immense treasure of 5000
talents (about a million and' a quarter pounds sterling),
and landed at Cape Sunium, in Attica. He might
reasonably flatter himself that he would not be an
unwelcome visitor at Athens, but in this he was dis-
appointed. There was the fear of the wrath of
Alexander; and the fear, too, that Harpalus might
possibly intend to assume the position of a tyrant or
despot. His offers, whatever they were, were rejected;
but there was a debate in the Assembly, and a rumour
reached Alexander that Athens had received him and
his armament. This was at the time untrue; but
when he sent away his ships and asked leave to be
admitted into the city with a few personal attendants,
the people, remembering his past favours, no longer
refused. Having gained his point, he tried to per-
suade them that they might defy Alexander with a
prospect of success, and that he was himself able and
willing to furnish them with the necessary funds.
Some of the orators supported his views. But he
could do nothing with Phocion or with Demosthenes.
This was fatal to his project. Soon there came
envoys from Antipater, Alexander's deputy in Mace-
donia, requiring his surrender. But this both Phocion
and Demosthenes, notwithstanding the danger of the
crisis, opposed. So alarmed, however, were the people
at the thought of Alexander's probable vengeance, that .
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? LAST DAYS OF DEMOSTIIENES. 149
they decided on arresting Harpalus and sequestrating
his treasure till they could learn what view Alexander
took of the matter; and this much they did on the
motion of Demosthenes himself. It seems possible, as
has been suggested, that Demosthenes proposed this
motion with an mfie? re-pcnse? e, and may have wished
to detain Harpalus and his treasure, and to wait the
course of events. Harpalus contrived to escape; but
his treasure--that part of it at least which he'had
brought to Athens after dismissing his fleet, and which
amounted,' according to statements made by Demos-
thenes on his authority, to about 720 talents--1-emained
behind. This, of course, ought to have been returned--
and the people were, it seems, prepared to do so; but
when the money was counted it was found that there
was no more than 350 talents, barely half the original
sum. How was the deficiency to be explained'!
There was a great stir and outcry. People said that
it must have been used in bribery, and that the
missing money must have stuck to the fingers of the
orators and public men. There was a general feeling
that somebody ought to be punished, but there was
not a scrap of evidence against any one, and no means
of procuring it.
Demosthenes proposed to have the affair investigated
by the court of Areopagus. It was not easy to see what
better course could have been taken. At the same time,
the members of that court must have felt that they could
hardly hope, under the circumstances, to arrive at a per-
fectly satisfactory' result. No doubt they commanded
the public confidence, as they were all men of age and
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? 150 DEAIOSTHENES.
experience, and were from their position above the
motives which occasionally swayed other courts. Great
latitude was allowed them ; and practically they often
decided cases not simply on the evidence before them,
but on hearsay, and on that personal knowledge which
men in their rank would be sure to possess. They
took the utmost pains with the present inquiry, and
were engaged on it for six months. They went so far as
' to search the houses of the principal public men, with
the exception of one who had been lately married--an
exception perhaps to be attributed to a sense (if delicacy.
At last they published their report, with a list of the
names of persons whom they considered chargeable with
having improperly possessed themselves of the missing
money.
'
In this list appeared the name of Demosthenes as
a debtor to the amount of 'twenty talents. The next
step was to give the accused parties the choice of
taking their trial or of paying the sum with which the
Areopagus had debited them. Of those brought to
trial, Demosthenes was the first. He was tried before
a jury of 1500 of his fellow-citizens, was found guilty,
a. nd sentenced to pay a fine of fifty talents (about
? 12,000). It is very possible that among the jury
which condemned him there may have been many who
wished to please Alexander, and many, too, of the
friends of Harpalus. It must, however, be remem-
bered that the decision of the Areopagus could not
fail to influence their verdict. Demosthenes would
not or could not pay the fine. He was imprisoned,
but in a few days was able to escape to Troezcn, in the
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? LA ST DA Y S OF DEM OSTH ENES. '15 1
territory of Argos. It was but a few months that> he
remained there. _ _ _ .
'We can hardly bring ourselves to believe that he
was really guilty. Of course we can judge> only
by probabilities; and it is certain that the court of
Areopagus must have had grounds for their suspicion.
We must bear in mind that they merely drew up a
list of persons whose case in their opinion required
further judicial inquiry. There is no reason foriassum-
ing that they regarded the guilt of Demosthenes as
certain. The inquiry was lon,? ,r and difficult ; and the
decision ultimately arrived at could have been hardly
meant to express confident assurance. If Demosthenes
publicly stated, on Harpa1us's authority, the amount of
the treasure, it seems strange that he should have made
himself a party to the disappearance of a portion of it.
It may be that the statement he made had not been
verified by him, and it may have been altogether errone-
ous. It is pleasant to find that both Dr T hirlwalland
Mr Grote incline to acquit him of this mean dishonesty.
It may be worth while to mention a story told by Plut-
arch about this painful passage in the life of Demos-
thenes. Like many of his stories, it is probably a pure
fiction, but it is at least amusing. Harpalus, he tells
us, won over the orator to his side by sending a
singularly beautiful golden cup, his admiration of which
he had noted. Along with the cup were twenty talents,
the sum with which the Areopagus had debited him.
Shortly afterwards, when the proposals of Harpalus
were being discussed in the Assembly, Demosthenes,
who had previously oooosed them, appeared with a
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? 152 DEJUOSTIIENES.
woollen bandage round his throat, and pretended that
he could not speak, from an attack of quinsy. _ Some
wag remarked that it must be the silver quinsy. The
people laughed, but were angry. Such is the story.
But, as a fact, Demosthenes did not drop his opposition
to Harpalus. It was on his motion, as we have seen, that
Harpalus was arrested and his treasure sequestrated.
We left the great orator in exile at Troezen. He was
recalled soon after the death of Alexander in 323 no.
An attempt was then made once more to rid Greece of
the Macedonian ascendancy. It was finally crushed
by Antipater in the battle of Crannon in 322 13. 0. ' The
conqueror demanded the surrender of the leading anti-
Macedonian orators--Demosthenes, of course, among
them. Athens from this moment ceased to exist as a
free state. A Macedonian garrison was introduced;
there was a wholesale disfranchisement of citizens,
and a new political constitution was imposed on the
city. Demosthenes did not remain to be a witness of
this degradation. He had been welcomed back to his
native Athens with joyful enthusiasm; now he must
leave her for ever. He took refuge in the little island
of Calauria, ofl' the coast of Argolis. It was here that
he chose to die rather than fall into the hands of the
"exile-hunters," as the emissaries of Antipater were
called. Within the precincts of an ancient temple of
Neptune, regarded of old as an inviolable sanctuary,
he swallowed poison, retaining in his last moments
sufiicient presence of mind to expire outside the sacred
enclosure, to which, in Greek belief, death would have
been a pollution.
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? CHAPTER XIV.
nsuosrnmnzs AT THE mu.
Ir has seemed most convenient not to interrupt our
sketch of the political career of Demosthenes with_
any allusions to his purelyr forensic engagements. He
became, comparatively early in 1ife--that is to say, when
he was probably under thirty years of age--a very suc-
cessful pleader in large practice. It may be as well now
to give the reader some idea of the work with which he
was occupied, and of the speeches which in this capa-
city he was called on to deliver.
At Athens there was no separate and distinct class
answering to our bar. But there were professional
orators and rhetoricians in abundance, who made it
their business to compose speeches for plaintiffs and
defendants. They did not, however, as a rule, make
the speeches themselves; they merely prepared them
and put them in the hands of their clients, who com-
mitted them to memory and then addressed the court.
Of course it would often happen that a man felt him-
self quite unequal to such an ordeal, and would get an
experienced speaker to plead for him. Most, however,
of the forensic speeches of Demosthenes which have
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? 154 DEMOSTHENES.
come down to us, were written for delivery by the
plaintiff or the defendant in person. Part of the
orator's art consisted in adapting them to the style and
manner of man his client happened to be. This cir-
cumstance often gives piquancy to these speeches.
They abound in amusing passages illustrative of
many varieties of Athenian life. VVe have descrip
tive touches of the peculiar ways of the commercial
rogue, of the money-lender, of the fraudulent trustee.
Fortune has been kind in preserving for us something
like thirty orations of Demosthenes, in which these and
kindred figures present themselves to our notice. We
thus peep into the banking-house and the factory, and
see the Athenian citizen bargaining with merchants and
shipowners, or busy with his farm, or making his last
will and testament.
Athens was a city in which lawsuits could not fail
to be plentiful. It was a centre of trade, and a resort
of foreigners from all parts. Then, too, there were the
mines of Laurium along the coast; there were quarries
of marble ; and the adjacent seas were famous for their
fisheries. Athenian manufactures, too, were highly
prized. From the shores of the Black Sea and the
islands of the ZEgean there was a good trade in corn,
timber, wine, and wool. Here were all the materials
of commerce, and consequently of litigation. Many
an Athenian citizen was himself in business; and the
city seems to have swarmed with bustling, enterprising
foreigners who found it convenient to make it their
home. The law courts had plenty of work to do--so
much so, indeed, that the " law's delay " appears to have
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? DEMOSTHENES AT THE BAR. 155
been as familiar to Athenians as to ourselves. " Some
people," says Xenophen, if he really wrote the treatise
attributed to him on the Athenian republic, " complain
that a man often waits a twelvemonth at Athens before
he can obtain an audience of the Senate or of the
popular assembly. The fact is, they have so much to
do there that it is impossible to attend to every man's
application; some, therefore, are compelled to. go away
unheard. " Ill-natured persons, it seems, hinted that
anybody could obtain a hearing by means of a bribe.
Xenophon admits that there may be some truth in this ;
but he adds, speaking from his own knowledge, "that
for no amount of gold and silver which could be offered
would it be possible for the Athenians to transact all
the business that is brought before them. " Athens, in
fact, was the place to which nearly all causes from the
islands of the Higean were brought for trial; and to
which, too, it was probably best and safest that they
should be brought. Athenian trials were conducted in
a way which to us seems singular, and which at first sight
might appear very unfavourable to the administration
of justice. Causes were heard, as with us, before juries;
but at Athens a jury commonly numbered 500, and
might number 1000 or even more. It was, in fact,
trial before a popular assembly. There was a president,
but he was not armed with the controlling powers of
an English judge. Everything was left to the jury;
the law of the case as well as the facts was for them to
decide. To us this may seem the height of absurdity ;
but still at Athens it worked moderately well, and in a
majority of cases we may believe that it secured at
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? 156 _ DEMOSTHENES.
least substantial justice. The Athenian juror, it is
true, had not received what we call a lege? il education ;
but he was naturally critical and sharp-witted, and he
was well practised in the hearing of causes. It is quite
possible that the average decisions of an Athenian jury
may have been as good and satisfactory as those of an
English. There was, of course, a danger of their being
swayed too much at times by political considerations.
But to this we know that an English jury is also liable.
There was another and a worse danger. The popula-
tion of Athens was comparatively small; and so it
would often happen that plaintiff and defendant, and the
case at issue between them, would be well known to the
jurors. The Athenian pleader was continually' appeal-
ingt6 the personal knowledge of the jury, and would
in this manner supplement deficiencies in the evidence.
" He is a scoundrel ; you all know him to be one,"---
this was the sort of language commonly addressed to a
jury at Athens. Alsehines, in prosecuting one Timar-
chus, dwells on the notoriety of the ma. n's guilt and
wickedness--~" Such," he says, "is the testimony of the
whole people of Athens, and it is not right that they
should be convicted of perjury. " This strikes us as
a very loose method of procedure. Yet we find it
repeatedly in the speeches of Demosthenes. And it is
what we must expect where the judicial system is made
thoroughly democratic. We must not be surprised at
the savage invective with which the greatest Athenian
orators thought it seemly to interlard their speeches.
Even with us and all our restrictions, advocates contrive
occasionally to indulge in considerable licence, and did
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? DEMOSTHENES AT THE BAR. 157
so formerly to a much greater extent ; and it is, perhaps,
a question whether some of the most offensive passages
in Demosthenes and Aischines might not be paralleled
from English pleadings.
Another evil of the Athenian judicial system was the
division of responsibility. One out of 500 or 1000
jurors might very well shelter himself under the excuse,
that if he decided wrongly from carelessness or parti-
alit , the result would not be muchyaffectcd. On the
other hand, there were advantages which will occur to
the minds of those who are acquainted with the history
of free institutions. Corruption and bribery cannot have
been particularly easy. Nor, again, could anything like
ixitir'nidation be well practised. The fact, too, that rich
and poor were brought together to discharge an import-
ant public function, would have a salutary effect. It
would make them feel that they were members of one
commonwealth, and inspire them with a respect for its
laws. It would call out many of their best sentiments,
as well as sharpen their intellects. Their decisions
may have sometimes been such as we with our modern
ideas cannot approve; but, on the whole, it may be
assumed that they commanded the confidence of the
people. The Athenian may have had a perverse fond-
ness for listening to the wranglings of rival plead-
ers ; but he did his best generally to hear both sides
fairly, and to decide rightly. The jury system, with all
its accompaniments of trained oratory and carefully-
composed speeches, was contemporaneous with the
marvellous development of Athenian literature in the
age of Pericles. To it we are certainly indebted
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? 158 DEMOSTHENES.
for some of the most splendid monuments of hmiran'
genius.
Such numerous juries could hardly have been fit to
deal with cases involving a multitude of intricate de-
tails connected with money accounts or valuations of
property. Matters of this kind were usually referred,
as with us, to a court of arbitration--public arbitra-
tors being annually appointed. Of these we hear con-
tinually in the forensic speeches of the Athenian
orators, and we may take it for granted that much of
the law business was disposed of by them. Indeed,
it was the regular practice to submit ordinary private
disputes to arbitrators in the first instance; but,
as might have been expected in a democratic state,
there was always an appeal from their decisions to a
jury.
On the whole, it is not unlikely that justice was
fairly well administered in the Athenian courts. Such,
at all events, seems to have been the opinion of the
Greek world; and we can hardly suppose that that
opinion was without foundation. Some of the draw-
backs of the system have been already noted, and they
were no doubt considerable. A clerrer and unscrupulous
advocate might have had a better chance at Athensthan
he would have with us. It is, of course, an immense
advantage that atrained lawyer should preside over a
court, and sum up the case, and point out to the jury
the general principles by which they should be guided.
It is probable that the want of this was often felt
at Athens, and led occasionally to unfortunate results.
Still, we may be sure that the average Athenian was
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? DEMOSTHENES AT THE BAR. 159
a man of intelligence, and perfectly open to reason.
Practice, too, made him tolerably well acquainted with
his country's laws. It is the greatest mistake to con-
ceive of Athens as " a fierce democracy.