(BOOK VIII.--No. 4)


In the old, vain, and fickle city of Athens, an orator,[2] seeing how
the light-hearted citizens were blind to certain dangers which
threatened the state, presented himself before the tribune, and there
sought, by the very tyranny of his forceful eloquence, to move the heart
of the republic towards a sense of the common welfare.

But the people neither heard nor heeded. Then the orator had recourse to
more urgent arguments and stronger metaphors, potent enough to touch
hearts of stone. He spoke in thunders that might have raised the dead;
but his words were carried away on the wind. The beast of many heads[3]
did not deign to hear the launching of these thunderbolts. It was
engrossed in something quite different. A fight between two urchins was
what the crowd found so engaging; not the orator's warnings.

What then did the speaker do? He tried another plan. "Ceres," he began,
"made a voyage one day with an eel and a swallow. After a time the
three travellers were stopped by a river. This the eel got over by
swimming and the swallow by flying----"

"Well! what about Ceres? What did she do?" cried the crowd with one
voice.

"She did what she did!" retorted the speaker in anger. "But first she
raged against you. What! Does it take a child's story to open your ears,
you who should be eager for any news of the peril that menaces; you, the
only state in Greece that takes no heed? You ask what Ceres did. Why do