[312]
No more disgraceful speeches have ever
been made in your hearing during the whole course of your history. Lives there a
man, Greek or barbarian, so boorish, so unversed in history, or so ill-disposed
to our commonwealth that, if he were asked the question, “Tell me, in
all the country that we call Greece and
inhabit today, is there an acre that would still bear that name, or remain the
home of the Greeks who now possess it, if the heroes of Marathon and Salamis, our forefathers, had not in their
defence performed those glorious deeds of valor,” is there one man who
would not make reply: “No; the whole country would have become the
prey of the barbarian invaders”?
Demosthenes. Demosthenes with an English translation by C. A. Vince, M. A. and J. H. Vince, M.A. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1926.
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.