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The English commentary in this edition owes much to the explanatory notes written in other languages, in Latin, German and French, by F. A. Wolf, and Westermann and Weil respectively. Apart from notes on ordinary points of scholarship, much attention has here been deliberately devoted to Greek law and history and antiquities, and special prominence has been duly given to illustrations from Greek inscriptions. It is in this last respect that the progress of discovery places editors and students of Demosthenes in the present day at an advantage over those of the times of Wolf, the founder and 'true author of modern classical culture', whose important edition of the present speech was published exactly one hundred years ago; and it is just because the interpretation of our speech is so much concerned with questions of Greek antiquities that this particular kind of illustration is of peculiar value. In the course of an interesting excursus on Greek Inscriptions of the times of Thucydides, Professor Jowett has justly remarked that 'the additional facts obtained from inscriptions throw greater light upon Greek antiquities than upon Greek history'; and, while warning his readers against attributing an undue importance to this department of study, he candidly confesses that 'the investigation of them, especially on the spot, is full of interest independently of the result. To be busy on Greek soil, under the light of the blue heaven, amid the scenes of ancient glory, in reading inscriptions, or putting together fragments of stone or marble, has a charm of another kind than that which is to be found in the language of ancient authors'. Curiously enough, it was an English scholar's discovery of an inscription on the southern wall of the Acropolis that first led to the belief that Demosthenes failed in the object of his speech3; and if we are ever to obtain definite proof that he succeeded in that object, we must wait for the discovery of an inscription recording the grant of exemption from the public burdens. between B.C. 355, the date of the speech, and B.C. 309, the year in which personal service on the part of a choregos acting on his own behalf was superseded by another system1. Such an inscription would indeed be welcomed by the student of Demosthenes, who, owing to the imperfect evidence hitherto produced, must be content with the assurance that the present speech, like the investigation of Greek inscriptions, is full of interest, independently of the result'.

1 Pattison's Essays, i 338.

2 Jowett's Thucydides, vol. II pp. xxi and lxxxiv.

3 Introd. p. xxx.

4 Ib. p. vii.

As compared with scholars a hundred years ago, modern students have a further advantage in a better knowledge of the relative value of the manuscripts of Demosthenes, and of the preeminent importance of the Paris manuscript. My study of its readings, in the early part of 1886, led me to suggest to the Palaeographical Society the desirability of including a specimen page in their series of facsimiles, and I am indebted to the kindness of Mr E. M. Thompson, Principal Librarian of the British Museum, for allowing the plate to be used in the present edition.

Among others who have been good enough to help me in my work, I may mention the name of one who formerly attended my lectures on this subject, and has recently devoted the utmost pains to revising my proof-sheets,—Mr H. J. Spenser, Foundation Scholar of St John's College.

In connexion with that College, it may be remarked in conclusion, that this is not the first edition of the speech which has been attempted by a member of its foundation. Its first modern editor was John Taylor, Fellow of the College, and successively Librarian and Registrary of the University; and his edition, in the beautiful type cast in Holland under the orders of Bentley, had (like the present) the advantage of being printed at the University Press. The scrupulous care, which the officials of the Press have bestowed on the production of the present volume, may perhaps warrant my gratefully applying to the outward form of its publication the language used by Taylor, exactly a hundred and fifty years ago, in looking back on the pains that had been spent on a work of far larger compass, his edition of Lysias :

Ut aliqua saltem spes superesse videatur, vel Chartae nitorem, vel Typorum elegantiam, vel Typothetae denique meamque operosam diligentiam exemplaria nostra a fatali oblivione vindicaturam.

J. E. SANDYS.

CAMBRIDGE,

December, 1889.

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§ 12. List of Abbreviations used in the critical notes &c. .

TEXT AND NOTES

GREEK AND ENGLISH INDEX

PAGES

viii, ix

X

xi-xviii

xviii-xxii

xlvi-xlviii

xlviii

1-116

117-122

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IN the year 357 B.C. the naval confederacy established by Athens twenty years before,—a confederacy which, owing to the energy of Chabrias, of Timotheus son of Conon, and of the orator Callistratus, had been ultimately joined by as many as seventy cities,—was shaken for the first time by the secession of Thebes. This important defection was shortly followed by the revolt of Chios, which gave the signal for the outbreak of the Social War (357-355). Athens was unprepared; but, by great efforts on the part of her patriotic citizens, a naval force was got together and a fleet under the command of Chares despatched against Chios. When the ships forced their way into the harbour, between the two projecting moles that even in their ruins may still be traced by the modern traveller', the foremost vessel was that of Chabrias. Thirty-five years had passed away since that gallant soldier had succeeded Iphicrates in the command of the Athenian forces at Corinth (392). He had afterwards been called to the aid of Evagoras against Persia (388), and of Thebes against Agesilaus (378); had defeated the Lacedaemonian fleet off Naxos (376), had commanded the navy of Tachos king of Egypt in his rebellion against Artaxerxes 11 (361), and had recently been at the head of the Athenian forces in Thrace (358). He was now serving as an ordinary trierarch under the command of Chares. Advancing boldly into the centre of the harbour, he became separated from the ships of his friends and entangled with those of the enemy; and, after a desperate struggle, died the death of a hero on the deck of his trireme. But the heroism of a single citizen, who thus closed by an imprudent exploit a career in which he had won the fame of being 'the safest of all generals' (Lept. 82), could not prevent the attack itself from ending in failure; and a later engagement in the narrow channel between Chios and the coast of Asia was equally unsuccessful.

Peace was at last concluded with the confederates in the summer of 355; but meanwhile the cost of the war had exhausted the treasury

1 H. F. Tozer, in the Academy, 4 Sept. 1886, p. 153= The Islands of the Aegean, 1890, p. 144.

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