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And our city, the common refuge of the Greeks, to which in former days used to come the embassies of all Hellas, each city in turn to find safety with us, our city is now no longer contending for the leadership of Hellas, but from this time on for the soil of the fatherland. And this has come upon us from the time when Demosthenes came into political leadership. Well does the poet Hesiod speak concerning such men; for he says somewhere, instructing the people and advising the cities not to take to themselves corrupt politicians—but I will myself recite the verses;
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for this is the reason, I think, that in our childhood we commit to memory the sentiments of the poets, that when we are men we may make use of them: Ofttimes whole peoples suffer from one man, Whose deeds are sinful, and whose purpose base. From heaven Cromon launches on their heads Dire woe of plague and famine joined; and all The people waste away. Or else he smites Their wide-camped host, or wall. Or wrath of Zeus Far-thundering wrecks their ships upon the sea.Hes. WD 240 ff.; cp. Aeschin. 2.158. Hes. WD 240
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If you disregard the poet’s meter and examine only his thought, I think this will seem to you to be, not a poem of Hesiod, but an oracle directed against the politics of Demosthenes. For by his politics army and navy and peoples have been utterly destroyed.