10 DEMOSTHENES. greatness, these he followed, and endeavored to imitate, neither wholly neglecting the glory which present occa- sion ofiored, nor yet willing too often to expose his faculty to the mercy of chance. For, in fact, the orations which were spoken by him had much more of bold- ness and confidence in them than those that he wrote, if we may believe Eratosthenes, Demetrius the Phalerian, and the Comedians. Eratosthenes says that often in his speaking he would be transported into a kind of ecstasy, and Demetrius, that he uttered the famous metrical adju- ration to the people. By the earth, the springs, the rivers, and the streams, as a man inspired, and beside himself One of the come- dians calls him a rhopopcrperethras,* and another scoffs at him for his use of antithesis : — And what he took, took back ; a phrase to please The very fancy of Demosthenes. Unless, indeed, this also is meant by Antiphanes for a jest upon the speech on Halonesus, which Demosthenes ad- vised the Athenians not to take at Philip's hands, but to take hacJc.' All, however, used to consider Demades, in the mere use of his natural gifts, an orator impossible to surpass, and that in what he spoke on the sudden, he excelled all
- A loud declaimer about petty expressly understood that they toolc
matters ; from rhopos, small wares, it back ; Philip had no right to give smA^ perperos, a loud talker. what it was his duty to give back. t Halonesus had belonged to The distinction thus put was appar- Athens, but had been seized by ently the subject of a great deal of pirates, from whom Philip took it. pleasantry. Athenxus quotes five He was willing to make a present other passages from the comic wri- of it to the Athenians, but Demos- ters, playing upon it in the same thenes warned them not on any way. account to take it, unless it were
