[73]
You will realize this if you compare the
way in which Themistocles, the most famous man of his age, accomplished the same
result. Now history tells us that Themistocles bade his countrymen get on with
the building and detain anyone who came from Sparta, while he went off himself on an embassy to the
Lacedaemonians; and while negotiations went on there and the news kept coming
that the Athenians were fortifying, he denied it and told them to send envoys to
see for themselves, and when these envoys did not return, he urged them to send
more. Indeed, I expect you have all heard the story of how he hoodwinked them.
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.