you consider that, when the Rhodians and nearly all people are drawn into this slavery, our constitution must be in the same peril. If all other governments are oligarchical, it is impossible that they will let your democracy alone. They know too well that no other people will bring things back to freedom; therefore they will wish to destroy a government from which they apprehend mischief to themselves. Ordinary wrong-doers you may regard as enemies to the sufferers; while they who subvert constitutions and transform them into oligarchies must be looked upon as the common enemies of all lovers of freedom."
In the opinion of Demosthenes it thus appears that oligarchy was in fact slavery, and wholly alien to the Greek genius. The memory of the Athens of Pericles was deeply impressed on his mind. But he felt he was not addressing a people singularly prone to be misled. He hints plainly in this speech at the existence of an unpatriotic faction in the State.
"It is difficult for you," he says, "to adopt right measures. All other men have one battle to fight—namely, against their open and avowed enemies. You have a double contest—that which the rest have, and also a prior and a more arduous one. You must in counsel overcome a faction which acts among you in systematic opposition to the State. Men who desert the politics handed down to them by their ancestors, and support oligarchical measures, should be degraded
