antage,
and be rid of these perquisites, which are like the diet ordered by
physicians for the sick. As that neither imparts strength, nor
suffers the patient to die, so your allowances are not enough to be of
substantial benefit, nor yet permit you to reject them and turn to
something else. Thus do they increase the general apathy. What? I
shall be asked, mean you stipendiary service? Yes, and forthwith the
same arrangement for all, Athenians, that each, taking his dividend
from the public, may be what the state requires. Is peace to be had?
You are better at home, under no compulsion to act dishonorably from
indigence. Is there such an emergency as the present? Better to be a
soldier, as you ought, in your country's cause, maintained by those
very allowances. Is any one of you beyond the military age? What he
now irregularly takes without doing service, let him take by just
regulation, superintending and transacting needful business. Thus,
without derogating from or adding to our political system, only
removing some irregularity, I bring it into order, establishing a
uniform rule for receiving money, for serving in war, for sitting on
juries, for doing what each, according to his age, can do, and what
occasion requires. I never advise we should give to idlers the wages
of the diligent, or sit at leisure, passive and helpless, to hear that
such a one's mercenaries are victorious, as we now do. Not that I
blame any one who does you a service; I only call upon you, Athenians,
to perform upon your own account those duties for which you honor
strangers, and not to surrender that post of dignity which, won
through many glorious dangers, your ancestors have bequeathed.

I have said nearly all that I think necessary. I trust you will adopt
that course which is best for the country and yourselves.

FORMER ATHENIANS DESCRIBED.

(_By Demosthenes._)

I ask you, Athenians, to see how it was in the time of your ancestors;
for by domestic (not foreign) examples you may learn your lesson of
duty. Themistocles who commanded in the sea-fight at Salamis, and
Miltiades who led at Marathon, and many others, who performed services
unlike the generals of the present day--assuredly they were not set up
in brass nor overvalued by our forefathers, who honored them, but only
as persons on a level with themselves. Your forefathers, O my
countrymen, surrendered not their part to any of those glories. There
is no man who will attribute the