your good: but I think an upright citizen should prefer the advancement
of the commonweal to the gratification of his audience. And I hear, as
perhaps you do, that the speakers in our ancestors' time, whom all that
address you praise, but not exactly imitate, were politicians after this
form and fashion;--Aristides, Nicias, my namesake, [Footnote:
Demosthenes, the general so distinguished in the Peloponnesian war, who
defeated the Spartans at Pylus, and afterward lost his life in Sicily.]
Pericles. But since these orators have appeared, who ask, What is your
pleasure? what shall I move? how can I oblige you? the public welfare is
complimented away for a moment's popularity, and these are the results;
the orators thrive, you are disgraced. Mark, O Athenians, what a summary
contrast may be drawn between the doings in our olden time and in yours.
It is a tale brief and familiar to all; for the examples by which you
may still be happy are found not abroad, men of Athens, but at home. Our
forefathers, whom the speakers humored not nor caressed, as these men
caress you, for five-and-forty years took the leadership of the Greeks
by general consent, and brought above ten thousand talents into the
citadel; and the king of this country was submissive to them, as a
barbarian should be to Greeks; and many glorious trophies they erected
for victories won by their own fighting on land and sea, and they are
the sole people in the world who have bequeathed a renown superior to
envy. Such were their merits in the affairs of Greece: see what they
were at home, both as citizens and as men. Their public works are
edifices and ornaments of such beauty and grandeur in temples and
consecrated furniture, that posterity have no power to surpass them. In
private they were so modest and attached to the principle of our
constitution, that whoever knows the style of house which Aristides had,
or Miltiades, and the illustrious of that day, perceives it to be no
grander than those of the neighbors. Their politics were not for
money-making; each felt it his duty to exalt the commonwealth.