[45]
For even if a nurse is a lowly
thing, I do not shun the truth. For it is not our being poor that would mark us
as wrong-doers, but our not being citizens; and the present trial has to do, not
with our fortune or our money, but with our descent. Many are the servile acts
which free men are compelled by poverty to perform, and for these they should be
pitied, men of Athens, rather than
be brought also to utter ruin. For, as I am informed, many women have become
nurses and laborers at the loom or in the vineyards owing to the misfortunes of
the city in those days, women of civic birth, too; and many who were poor then
are now rich. However, I shall speak of these matters by and by.For the moment, please call the witnesses.“
Witnesses
”
Demosthenes. Demosthenes with an English translation by Norman W. DeWitt, Ph.D., and Norman J. DeWitt, Ph.D. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1949.
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