[14]
For wealth and speed of foot and strength of body and
all other such things have their rewards self-assured to their possessors, and
in those fields they win who have the luck, even if not one of the others wishes
their success. On the other hand, the persuasiveness of words depends upon the
goodwill of the hearers, and with the help of this, even if the eloquence be
moderate, it reaps glory and gains favor, but lacking this help, even if it be
surpassingly good, it is thwarted by those who hear.1
1 Blass compares Dem. 18.277, but the parallel is not precise.
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.
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.