Popular orators
group · 2 works · 2 mentions · 3 anchored passages
orators · popular orators · demagogues · depraved orators · speakers who come before you on the platform
in the texts
On the Peace
Political speakers who gratify the people, mislead the city, profit from disorder, and harm democracy.
I marvel that you cannot see at once that no class is so inimical to the people as our depraved orators and demagogues.
Did not the people themselves, because of the depravity of the popular orators, desire the oligarchy which was established under the Four Hundred?
Wherefore these men would be most happy to see all of our citizens reduced to the condition of helplessness in which they themselves are powerful.
Panathenaicus
Public speakers criticized for self-interest, financial wrangling, attacks on allies, and control over state affairs.
For they find fault with the character of the popular orators and yet put them at the head of affairs and invest them with power over the whole state;
And yet all men know that the majority of the orators have the audacity to harangue the people, not for the good of the state, but for what they themselves expect to gain, while I and mine not only abstain more than all others from the public funds but expend more than we can afford from our private means on the needs of the commonwealth;
And yet I did not permit these disabilities to dishearten me nor did I allow myself to sink into obscurity or utter oblivion, but since I was barred from public life I took refuge in study and work and writing down my thoughts, choosing as my field, not petty matters nor private contracts, nor the things about which the other orators prate, but the affairs of Hellas and of kings and of states.