[8]
Penury may involve inconvenience and
hardship but it carries with it no discredit, since poverty is frequently, I
imagine, a mark not of weakness of character but of sheer misfortune. When I
entered public life I did not concentrate on lawsuits or the perquisites to be
derived from writing speeches but on speaking freely from the platform, a
practice which makes the lives of orators dangerous but holds out the clearest
opportunities of success, if men are careful1; for, though they succumb to
the speaker, their country's safety must not also fall a victim.
1 εὐλαβουμένοις, too, clearly refers to the hearers, not to the orators, an therefore the sense is the same as that given by the words εὐλαβῶς ἀκροωμένοις, even if we do not adopt that emendation.
Demades. Minor Attic Orators in two volumes, 2, with an English translation by J. O. Burtt, M.A. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1962.
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