Athenian people

but in public affairs the State and the people try to find who is their benefactor and savior, and that question you will find is best decided by reference not to birth or opinion, but to plain fact.

For surely he cannot mean that precisely as he thought the holders of this privilege unworthy, so he thought the people unworthy of the right to dispense its own favors to whomsoever it wishes.

Afterwards, when you had rewarded him with immunity, seeing that in the war just before the rule of the Thirty the people were straitened for want of funds, he gave them a talent as a freewill offering.

But this same man, overtaken by the dangers which are now upon him, sent, not at the request of the Athenians, but of his own accord, three hundred talents to the people, which they were wise enough to refuse.

But if you turn to the second part of your decree, in which you have had the effrontery to write that he is a good man, and constantly speaks and does what is best for the Athenian people, omit the pretence and the bombast of your decree, and take hold of the facts, and show us what you mean.

You have compassed me about, I have not whither to take wings, suggest to him, But the Athenian people, Demosthenes, whither shall they flee?

and not only that, but when I had reported to the people what I had said about the Amphictyons and Boeotians, not briefly and rapidly as now, but as nearly word for word as possible, and when the people heartily applauded, I called upon him together with the other ambassadors, and asked them whether my report was true, and identical with what I had said to Philip;

Was it I, therefore, who prevented the people from imitating our forefathers, or was it you, Demosthenes, and those who were in conspiracy with you against the common good?

When the motion had been read—I think you all remember this—Demosthenes arose from among the presiding officers and refused to put the motion to vote, saying that he would not bring to naught the peace with Philip, and that he did not recognize the sort of allies who joined only in time, as it were, to help in pouring the peace libations;

The Allies to the Athenian People for valor and righteousness, or The Allies to the Goddess of Athens, a prize of victory;

There is another thing that he did not understand, that the Athenian democracy, never eager to acquire riches, coveted glory more than any other possession in the world.

Again, I expect that he will not shrink from vilifying the people and the Assembly, but will repeat what he had the effrontery to say when the plaint was first brought in:

and suppose that one of you, who are men of the people and friends to popular government, having offended one of these men,—not so seriously as Meidias offended me, but in some slighter degree—came before a jury packed with men of that class;

As those of you who were present know, gentlemen, he had risen on that occasion to such a height of bravado and impudence that, by abusing and threatening and turning his glance to any quarter of the Assembly that was inclined to be obstreperous, he thought he could browbeat the whole body of citizens.

therefore be it resolved by the Council and People of Athens, after offering prayers and sacrifices to the gods and heroes who guard the city and country of the Athenians, and after taking into consideration their ancestors’ merits, in that they ranked the preservation of the liberties of Greece above the claims of their own state, that two hundred ships be launched, and that the Admiral sail into …

Therefore now also the people of Athens will not desert the cause of Thebes and the other Greeks.

Furthermore, the People of Athens regard the people of Thebes as in no way alien either in race or in nationality.