William Jackson Brodribb

“ The highest aspects of Greek life, and its best influences on the civilisation of the world, were intimately connected with Greece as existing according to his conception of what she ought to be. His eloquence is at its highest when he dwells on her fixed resolution in past days to resist to the death anything like foreign dictation or interference. Greece, in his view, was nothing if she once brought herself to endure it. ”

“ The best and noblest eloquence must be the product of earnest political conviction, Cicero clung to the traditions of the old republic, and regarded the concentration of power in one man as equivalent to his country's degradation and fall. The Greek statesman could not imagine a worse calamity than that Greece should cease to exist as an aggregate of free, self-governing communities, and become a dependency on a foreign kingdom or empire. ”

“ It was a noble one, though at the time it may have been becoming more and more incapable of realisation, as indeed was the sincere belief of some perfectly honest men who were politically opposed to Demosthenes. ”