[133]
I will
not mention very ancient instances, or any earlier than the archonship of
Eucleides1; but I must observe that many men, who in their own generation
were highly esteemed for their earlier conduct, were nevertheless most severely
treated by the People for the offences of their later life. The commonwealth was
not content with a period of honesty followed by knavery, but expected
uninterrupted honesty in public dealings. The previous honesty of such a person
was not, in their view, attributable to innate virtue; it was part of a scheme
to attract confidence.
1 403 B.C.
Demosthenes. Demosthenes with an English translation by A. T. Murray, Ph.D., LL.D. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1939.
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.