Stoics like Panatius justly recommended his speeches as a good moral study on account of their lofty tone. It was through the rhetoricians that he was ultimately rehabilitated. Cæcilius and Dionysius both wrote largely upon him, and the first letter to Ammæus of the latter is an elaborate eulogy of the 'wonderful eloquence of Demosthenes.' From this tract, and from Dionysius' incidental allusions in discussing other Greek orators, we discover that the critics of the day had begun to reject many works as spurious, and that the catalogue only included about forty-four of the extant speeches. As to mere copies of the text, we do not hear much from Dionysius. But it appears that the 'Arriará, or copies written by a certain Atticus, were thought of peculiar value, as Lucian tells us, who speaks of him as a contemporary. Among the Greek rhetors of the Roman schools, comparisons of Demosthenes and Cicero, of Demosthenes and Æschines, and other such essays became common; and from the many monographs or vжоμvýμara they composed, were brought together the body of scholia, which have reached us under the name of Ulpian, and in which (together with allusions in Suidas and Photius) we find at least twenty-five authors of such works quoted. The tract on the Sublime is perhaps the only one which gives us the æsthetic criticisms of this age. The author's judgments on Demosthenes are sound and clear. But though Ulpian is

1

said to have been a rhetor of the third century A.D., we find fourth century authors quoted in his scholia, so that his own work may not have extended beyond the public orations,

of the orator in consonance with it in Mr. Simcox's excellent preface to the edition of the speeches on the Crown, with all of which I would agree, except that he gives some credence to the attacks on Demosthenes charging him with unchastity. These the whole man's life, and his portrait statue, forbid us to believe. Among the Germans, I find that L. Spengel, in his articles on Demosthenes' harangues, has taken an independent course, and does not fall down and worship the orator's character as well as his eloquence. But Spengel has found many opponents, and only a stray follower in A. Weidner. The question of Demosthenes' incorruptibility will recur in connection with the accusations of Hypereides.

1 Adv. indoct. I.

the rest being the collection of Zosimus, or some such person. They are pretty full on the first twenty-four orations, very poor on the rest, but are, unfortunately, almost all on rhetorical points, and tell us little of the history or politics with which the text is concerned. Our best arguments are ascribed to Libanius, but there are often found more prolix arguments by other rhetors.

§ 539. Bibliographical. When we emerge from the Middle Ages we find a rich store of MSS., several Italian ones being as old as the eleventh century (the Marcian F perhaps even from the tenth), and one of them written by the same hand as the famous Ravennas of Aristophanes. But they are all completely thrown into the shade by the Parisian Σ, of the tenth century, which is now recognised as the proper basis of the text, and probably taken from an Attican copy, whereas the rest are all the vulgar (dnμwdes), considerably interpolated. But from these latter (especially the Marcian F, sæc. x. or xi.) Aldus printed his Demosthenes in 1504. He also printed Ulpian's scholia in 1503. All the later editions up to the present generation followed this recension, merely adding collations of MSS. of the same class. Now at last the Zurich editors, Dindorf, Bekker, and Cobet, have shown the enormous value of the codex 2, which has been most thoroughly and minutely collated for the edition of H. Weil (two volumes have appeared), but also for the texts prepared by these scholars. The work of commenting on Demosthenes is so varied and extensive, that except Weil's volumes, which already embrace most of the important speeches, and Redantz on the speeches regarding Philip, no general edition can be recommended for exegesis. The best texts are Bekker's (second edition, Leipzig, 1854-5), G. Dindorf's (with the scholia, nine volumes Oxon, 1846-51), and Voemel's (second edition, Paris, 1868); special editions of separate speeches are innumerable, and the best have been mentioned separately in the foregoing chapter. The English translations of Demosthenic orations, especially of that on the Crown, are very numerous, the latest being that of Sir R. Collier. Leland's, of the last century, has a deservedly high repute. The myriad newer literature on

Demosthenes (up to 1877) will be found catalogued in the thirty-seventh volume of the Philologus, pp. 676, sq. Little can ever be added, save in the way of criticism, to the exhaustive histories of A. Schäfer and F. Blass, from which I have borrowed materials throughout.

CHAPTER XII.

THE ORATORS CONTEMPORARY WITH DEMOSTHENES.

§ 540. DEMOSTHENES was only the greatest among a constellation of great speakers, of whom we have sufficient remains to justify the high praise accorded to them by the Greek historians of rhetoric. If in fact they were not all judged by the severe test of comparison with Demosthenes, we should pronounce most of them as quite first-rate in their department of literature; in some respects, indeed, their less studied composition is more congenial to modern taste than the thoroughly professional eloquence of their great rival.

We naturally begin with ÆSCHINES, marked out by his life as the special antagonist to Demosthenes. Little would be known of him but for this circumstance, and that little again has been obscured and perverted by the unsparing and reckless vituperation of Demosthenes. But it is almost ridiculous how the extant Lives of Æschines gravely repeat the calumnies of the de Corona, as if they were historical truth, while the equally well-founded countercharges of Eschines against Demosthenes are generally set down at their proper value. However, this vulgar habit of personal λodopía compelled orators to make counter-statements showing their own antecedents, and to these, when unrefuted by their adversaries, we are bound to assign most weight, as they probably only err by omission, not by deliberate falsification.

The sketch of Apollonius (prefixed to the texts) is more honest than the rest, in appending to Demosthenes' scurrilities the facts stated by Æschines himself in his own defence.1 His

1 περὶ παραπρεσβ. §§ 78, 147, 168.

father, Atrometus, who was in court, at the age of ninety-four, when this case was pleaded (344–3 B.C.), was a respectable but poor citizen of the deme of the Kothokidæ,' who, before he lost his property owing to the Peloponnesian war, was a private citizen and an athlete, then was exiled in the days of the Thirty, and served as a mercenary soldier in Asia. He belonged, says Æschines, to a clan which had the same family worship and altars as the Eteoboutadæ, from whose family the priestess of Athene Polias was chosen. Atrometus returned from Corinth with the exiles under Thrasybulus, and being poor began to make his livelihood as a schoolmaster. He had married Glaucothea, the daughter of Glaucus of the deme Acharnæ, apparently of respectable family. The orator tells us his mother shared in the exile to Corinth, which seems strange, as her second son, Æschines, was not born till 389 B.C., according to his own. statement. His elder brother, Philochares, and his younger, Aphobetus,2 were both well known and respectable men, the former entrusted with the highest commands.

Our orator is said in early youth to have assisted his father in keeping the school, and also (by Demosthenes) to have helped his mother in some disreputable private religious mysteries, such as were common but in bad odour at Athens. Eschines never denies that she was employed in some such living, but merely accentuates the respectability of her family and connections. Being duly enrolled on attaining the age of puberty, he served his term in the Tερíñoλ, or frontier guards of Athens, and in the later campaigns at Nemea (368), at Mantinea (362), and especially at Tamynæ (349), fought with such credit that he was publicly distinguished by the general Phocion. At what time of

1 Some demes were local, and called by the name of their towns. But others were not so, and were called after some legendary hero. This deme is always mentioned in the patronymic form, but I can find no trace whatever of the personage from whom it derived its name. Hesychius gives кol and rope as rare forms in the sense of Bλáßŋ. Hence Fick (Griech. Personennamen) suggests ко0άкns in the sense of healer of ill (кodw-άкns), as the epithet of the eponymous hero of the deme.

2 The Life ascribed to Plutarch quotes these names as Aphobus and Demochares, which shows either negligence or a text varying from ours. The former is the more probable.