wrong, men of Athens, in doing battle for the freedom and salvation of all; I swear it by your forefathers, who bore the battle's brunt at Marathon; by those who stood in arms at Platæa; by those who fought the sea-fight at Salamis; by the heroes of Artemisium, and many more whose resting-place in our national monuments attests that, as our country buried, so she honoured, all alike—victors and vanquished. She was right; for what brave men could do, all did, though a higher power was master of their fate."
This, perhaps, is the most striking of the many striking passages in this great speech. Demosthenes carried his audience with him. His rival did not obtain a fifth of the votes. His position as an orator and statesman was destroyed. His discomfiture had been witnessed by the whole Greek world. In his mortification he left his native city for Rhodes, where he set up a school of rhetoric. The story was told that he once declaimed to his pupils the speech which had driven him into exile; and in reply to the applause with which it was greeted, exclaimed, "What if you had heard the beast himself speak it?"
