Product Description

Demosthenes (384–322 BCE), orator at Athens, was a pleader in law courts who later became also a statesman, champion of the past greatness of his city and the present resistance of Greece to the rise of Philip of Macedon to supremacy. We possess by him political speeches and law-court speeches composed for parties in private cases and political cases. His early reputation as the best of Greek orators rests on his steadfastness of purpose, his sincerity, his clear and pungent argument, and his severe control of language. In his law cases he is the advocate, in his political speeches a castigator not of his opponents but of their politics. Demosthenes gives us vivid pictures of public and private life of his time.

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Demosthenes is in seven volumes.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #555297 in Books
• Published on: 1930-01-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 640 pages

Customer Reviews

A glimpse of an ancient time
Considering the discourse about to be incited by the making of 3 new motion pictures about Alexander the Great, it's good to re-visit the primary sources from that time. This is especially valuable in regard to continous Greek propaganda aiming to appropriate and assimilate all things Macedonian, while even the Merriam-Webster Dictionary explains that there's no evidence that ancient Macedonian language was Greek:

Main Entry: Mac·e·do·nian
Pronunciation: "ma-s&-'dO-ny&n, -nE-&n

Function: noun
1 : a native or inhabitant of Macedonia
2 : the Slavic language of modern Macedonia
3 : the language of ancient Macedonia of uncertain affinity but generally assumed to be Indo-European

Excerpt from the Third Philippic:

[30] Ay, and you know this also, that the wrongs which the Greeks suffered from the Lacedaemonians or from us, they suffered at all events at the hands of true-born sons of Greece, and they might have been regarded as the acts of a legitimate son, born to great possessions, who should be guilty of some fault or error in the management of his estate: so far he would deserve blame and reproach, yet it could not be said that it was not one of the blood, not the lawful heir who was acting thus. [31] But if some slave or superstitious bastard had wasted and squandered what he had no right to, heavens! how much more monstrous and exasperating all would have called it! Yet they have no such qualms about Philip and his present conduct, though he is not only no Greek, nor related to the Greeks, but not even a barbarian from any place that can be named with honor, but a pestilent knave from Macedonia, whence it was never yet possible to buy a decent slave.