William Jackson Brodribb

“ Both these men refused to believe that Greece could any longer be what she had been. Both were honest and conscientious thinkers; but we can never have quite the same feeling towards the man who is inclined to despair of a great cause as we have towards him who will persist in hoping against hope. It was this which Demosthenes did through life amid many discouragements; and this gives him a moral greatness which we believe posterity will always recognise. Such a man would be sure in his public speeches to appeal to conscience, to the moral sense, and to a lofty patriotism. ”

“ Demosthenes is one of those men concerning whom, both as a statesman and an orator, there cannot be much difference of opinion. As a statesman, he is unanimously eulogised by modern historians of the first rank—such as Thirlwall, Grote, and Curtius. Every one who sees anything to esteem and admire in old Greek life, must esteem and admire Demosthenes. His political career was a consistent one. He clung to and worked for one idea. That idea was a free and independent Greece, of which his own Athens had, morally and intellectually, the right to be head. ”

“ As an orator he has, almost without question, been unrivalled. Lord Brougham, in his dissertation on the oratory of the ancients, confidently pronounces this opinion, and we are not aware that there is or has been any dissent from it. ”