If thy strength had only been equal to thy purposes,Of course those who say that Demosthenes himself composed these lines in Calauria, as he was about to put the poison to his lips, talk utter nonsense.
Demosthenes,
Never would the Greeks have been ruled by a
Macedonian Ares.
[5]
It was to this man, a little while after his death, that the Athenian people paid worthy honour by erecting his statue1 in bronze, and by decreeing that the eldest of his house should have public maintenance in the prytaneium. And this celebrated inscription was inscribed upon the pedestal of his statue:—
1 This statue, the work of Polyeuctus, was erected in 280-279 B.C., on motion of Demochares, a nephew of Demosthenes. The well-known marble statue of Demosthenes in the Vatican is thought to be a copy of it. See Pausanias i. 8, 2, with Frazer's notes.
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