Our days have not fallen on the common chances of mortal life.  We have been set to bequeath a story of marvels to posterity.  Is not the king of Persia, he who cut through Athos, and bridged the Hellespont, he who demands earth and water from the Greeks, he who in his letters presumes to style himself lord of all men from the sunrise to the sunset, is he not struggling at this hour, no longer for authority over others, but for his own life?  Do you not see the men who delivered the Delphian temple invested not only with that glory but with the leadership against Persia?  While Thebes—­ Thebes, our neighbor city—­has been in one day swept from the face of Greece—­justly it may be in so far as her general policy was erroneous, yet in consequence of a folly which was no accident, but the judgment of heaven.  The unfortunate Lacedaemonians, though they did but touch this affair in its first phase by the occupation of the temple,—­they who once claimed the leadership of Greece,—­ are now to be sent to Alexander in Asia to give hostages, to parade their disasters, and to hear their own and their country’s doom from his lips, when they have been judged by the clemency of the master they provoked.  Our city, the common asylum of the Greeks, from which, of old, embassies used to come from all Greece to obtain deliverance for their several cities at our hands, is now battling, no more for the leadership of Greece, but for the ground on which it stands.  And these things have befallen us since Demosthenes took the direction of our policy.  The poet Hesiod will interpret such a case.  There is a passage meant to educate democracies and to counsel cities generally, in which he warns us not to accept dishonest leaders.  I will recite the lines myself, the reason, I think, for our learning the maxims of the poets in boyhood being that we may use them as men:—­

 “Oft hath the bad man been the city’s bane;
  Oft hath his sin brought to the sinless pain: 
  Oft hath all-seeing Heaven sore vexed the town
  With dearth and death and brought the people down;
  Cast down their walls and their most valiant slain,
  And on the seas made all their navies vain!”

Strip these lines of their poetic garb, look at them closely, and I think you will say these are no mere verses of Hesiod—­that they are a prophecy of the administration of Demosthenes, for by the agency of that administration our ships, our armies, our cities have been swept from the earth. ...  “O yes,” it will be replied, “but then he is a friend of the constitution.”  If, indeed, you have a regard only to his delicacy you will be deceived as you were before, but not if you look at his character and at the facts.  I will help you to estimate the characteristics which ought to be found in a friend of the constitution; in a sober-minded citizen.  I will oppose to them the character that may be looked for in an unprincipled revolutionist.  Then you shall draw your comparison and consider on