[14]
Let me give you an instance, and
let no one interrupt me till I have finished my story. You know that a day or
two ago the treasury of the Parthenon1 was broken into. So the speakers in the Assembly, one and
all, cried that the democracy was overthrown, that the laws were null and void,
and so on. And yet, Athenians, though the culprits—mark whether my
words are true—deserved death, it is not through them that the
democracy is endangered. Again, a few oars were stolen. “Scourge the
thieves torture them,” cried the orators; “the democracy is
in danger.” But what is my opinion I say, like the others, that the
thief deserves death, but not that the democracy is endangered by such means.
1 The chamber at the back of the cella of the Parthenon was used as a treasury.
Demosthenes. Demosthenes with an English translation by C. A. Vince, M. A. and J. H. Vince, M.A. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1926.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
Purchase a copy of this text (not necessarily the same edition) from Amazon.com
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.