I have tried to render the speeches into such English as a political orator of
the present day might use, without attempting to impart to them any antique
colouring, such as the best-known English translations either had from the first
or have acquired by lapse of time. It is of the essence of political oratory
that it is addressed to contemporaries, and the translation of it should
therefore be into contemporary English; though the necessity of retaining some
of the modes of expression which are peculiar to Greek oratory and political
life makes it impossible to produce completely the appearance of an English
orator's work. The qualities of Demosthenes' eloquence sometimes suggest rather
the oratory of the pulpit than that of the hustings or that of Parliament and of
the law-courts. I cannot hope to have wholly succeeded in my task; but it seemed
to be worth undertaking, and I hope that the work will not prove to have been
altogether useless.

I have made very little use of other translations; but I must acknowledge a debt
to Lord Brougham's version of the Speeches on the Chersonese and on the Crown,
which, though often defective from the point of view of scholarship and based on
faulty texts, are (together with his notes) very inspiring. I have also, at one
time or another, consulted most of the standard German, French, and English
editions of Demosthenes. I cannot now distinguish how much I owe to each; but I
am conscious of a special debt to the editions of the late Professor Henri Weil,
and of Sir J.E. Sandys, and (in the Speech on the Crown) to that of Professor
W.W. Goodwin. I also owe a few phrases in the earliest speeches to Professor
W.R. Hardie, whose lectures on Demosthenes I attended twenty years ago. My
special thanks are due to my friend Mr. P.E. Matheson of New College, for his
kindness in reading the proof-sheets, and making a number of suggestions, which
have been of great assistance to me.

The text employed has been throughout that of the late Mr. S.H. Butcher in the
_Bibliotheca Classica Oxoniensis_. Any deviations from this are noted in their