I am reading the aforementioned oration of Demosthenes, starting the 1st of september, in about 10 weeks. I was wondering if there were any people interested in joining me in this small project. For those who are unfamiliar with Greek rhetorics: this is probably the most famous and one of the more difficult orations we have today, and Demosthenes shows once and for all he is not one to be mocked with.
If desired, I can upload some secondary literature once every two weeks for those who are interested in a more cultural, linguistic, and historical background of the oration. For example, my tutor has recently written an article on the use of the historical present in this oration. We could discuss the more difficult parts together or something. Look at it as a smaller version of the Thucydides-thread
No, not really. It’s not that hard. This is real Greek–challenging but not as hard as Thucydides’ speeches. I read this last year (along with Aeschines’ Against Ctesiphon, which I read first, and which doesn’t have a lot to recommend it except that it brings into focus why Demosthenes won hands down).
I’m currently engaged in another project–reading Thucydides; after finishing I started through a second time–but I could tag along at 6-7 Yunis pages a week (although I’ll be out of pocket for a week or so in October). Yunis is 67 pages; Dilts’s Oxford text is 109, but Dilts provides a fuller apparatus, with testimonia, and Yunis doesn’t print the spurious material, which we don’t have to read.
There’s an older edition by Goodwin (the Goodwin of Greek Grammar and Greek Moods and Tenses) on line, too. It isn’t as up to date on historical matters, but it’s still useful.
You can learn something about a crucial period of Greek history–the end of the city-states as autonomous entities and their incorporation into the Macedonian hegemony (as long as you take Demosthenes’ distortions and outright lies with more than a grain of salt).
You can learn something about Athenian legal institutions and procedures in the 4th century.
This is textbook Greek–in fact, Demosthenes and Plato are the primary authors on whose works the standard grammars are based. And it’s real Greek. You will come away with an enhanced mastery of Attic Greek prose after reading this.
This is a work that occupied a preeminent role in Greek and Roman education, and was without question the most admired speech in antiquity–as evidenced by the large number of ancient quotations. It was a point of reference, and served as a model, for much ancient literature that followed, particularly oratorical writings (which occupied a higher place in antiquity as a branch of literature than it does today).
Most of all, this is a terrific speech. It’s so natural that you can hear Demosthenes delivering it as you read it (even though it was probably touched up for publication). You can hear him pausing to collect his thoughts, departing from his script, jabbing his opponent with sarcastic asides and scurrilous invective, reaching climaxes of thundering intensity. As much as Homer and Plato and Thucydides, this speech is one of the reasons to learn ancient Greek.
I feel tempted to join, if not otherwise, then persuaded by Qimmik’s own rhetorical skilll. But I hesitate, since I’m not sure if I find the time. I promess to “try”.
Well, I meant that, as far as orations go, this is one of the hardest. I’m not talking about ‘‘embedded’’ speeches like Pericles’ funeral oration. If you compare it with Isocrates or Lysias, I do believe that it is one of the hardest speeches. Plato is textbook Greek --true-- but he can still be obscure at times, and a lot of undergraduates struggle with the long sentences in Attic prose as well as the interpretation of his filosofy.
But yes. From an objective point of view, Thucydides is harder than Demosthenes. But any undergraduate program would avoid Demosthenes and prefer to read something from Lysias, right? Every genre has its ‘most difficult author’. Anything from Demosthenes is probably harder than the most difficult part of the Iliad. But that doesn’t make Homer easy per se. In comparison with Thucydides, I guess one could call anything easy.
Anyhow, I appreciate your thoughts and the fact that you might want to join the project. Let’s keep eachother posted. I have a meeting with my tutor on Wednesday, so I will know more from then on.
If anyone else wants to join this, I would strongly suggest acquiring a copy of Yunis’ edition with commentary. There’s a lot of historical background that’s needed to understand this speech, and Yunis provides up-to-date information. He explains and translates many of the hardest passages. Yunis explains how Demosthenes addresses specific points in the speech of his opponent, Aeschines, “Against Ctesiphon” that Demosthenes is responding to. And Yunis is very good on alerting the reader to Demosthenes’ rhetoric–his framing of the case, his tricks, his evasions and his outright lies.
Just dropping in to note that I found Yunis in the library and a second hand copy of Goodwin for only a few euros. Tip: Abebooks still seems to have rather cheap original hardback copies of the Goodwin book from 1901 available, as well as older hardback reprints, which according to my experience are much superior to newer reprints. The old hardbacks are actually cheaper than the new paperback reprints which are probably of much lower quality…
What I’m unsure about is whether I find the time to tackle with this difficult text…
One further note: Goodwin seems to have made two different editions, one in 1901 and another in 1904, which is apparently an abridgment of the first one.
I read the introduction yesterday and had a chat with my tutor. In about 8 - 9 weeks I’m supposed to have finished the oration. I will focus on wordorder for my exam, but that’s something for later, maybe after a couple of weeks.
I agree with you that Yunis is very good at ‘‘setting the stage’’ for this oration. His introduction is excellent and easy to understand, even for non-native speakers of English. My tutor strongly suggested that I read some of Aeschines’ orations as well, which are just a few years before these, and, according to him, are to be looked at as a kind of build-up to this one.
Already I am fascinated with this oration, and I just read the first lines of Greek!
I haven’t seen that edition yet. I might look into it later, since, as Qimmik told us earlier, the apparatus criticus in Yunis’ edition is rather ‘minimalistic’ (in my own words), and doesn’t contain any spurious material. If the focus would have been on the textual tradition of the text, Yunis’ commentary would certainly have not been my first choice.
Yunis actually has a very good introductory discussion of the textual tradition, and discussions of textual issues, when they crop up, in his notes. The new Oxford edition of Dilts (vol. 1) has a more detailed discussion of the history of the text (in English!). But this is a well-preserved text: there are few, if any, serious difficulties. And as far as the text is concerned, the more modern editions offer more up-to-date information, based on advances in our understanding of the history of the text that have occurrred since Goodwin–and a number of papyri fragments have been published since then.
Goodwin was, of course, a pre-eminent authority on Greek syntax, whose contributions have not been entirely superseded today.
My tutor strongly suggested that I read some of Aeschines’ orations as well, which are just a few years before these, and, according to him, are to be looked at as a kind of build-up to this one.
Demosthenes’ oration On the Crown is a direct response to Aeschines’ third oration, Against Ctesiphon. The Aeschines oration is on line, starting here:
It’s hard to tell how much disapproval of Demosthenes’ behaviour is behind these words. I would say in mitigation of it that there haven’t been many court cases I’ve had any close acquaintance with where distortions, evasions and outright lies haven’t played a part.
I’m a bit out of touch with up-to-date assessments of Demosthenes. Is the idea that he was a true patriot well and truly demolished?
Ambivalence about Demosthenes goes back to antiquity. It’s nothing new.
Demosthenes was a true patriot, although ultimately his policies ended in failure, and some think that Aeschines’ policy of accommodation with Philip might have led to less disastrous results. When you read the history of Greece before Philip’s takeover–especially if you read Thucydides–you have to wonder whether the autonomy of the Greek city-states was worth the constant, destructive warfare among them. Macedonian rule (and later Roman rule) left the Greek cities a substantial degree of local autonomy while suppressing internecine conflicts.
It should be noted that several years after he delivered the speech on the Crown, Demosthenes was convicted of embezzlement and exiled from Athens, but his conviction may have been a political hatchet job. At this point the truth of the matter is irrecoverable.
Though I think no one questions Demosthenes’ sincerity in his defence of Athenian freedom against Philip’s encroachment, it’s abundantly clear that Demosthenes wasn’t above dissembling or distorting the truth or even outright lying. As I mentioned, Yunis’s commentary is good at exposing his distortions and prevarications, or at least raising questions about what Demosthenes tells us.
At the same time, it is a powerful and moving speech. If you read it attentively and with a certain amount of imagination, you can hear Demosthenes’ voice ringing across the ages.
One more on-line resource for this project: an 1889 edition of Aeschines’ speech against Ctesiphon, which is the speech to which Demosthenes’ speech On the Crown is responding:
So, are there any more people interested in joining the project? I have read the first 8 paragraphs just to get used to the prose again (I mainly read tragedy last year), but will start with the real work tomorrow. I know Qimmik will (try to) join the project, so that is a start and a position from which fruitful discussions will hopefully emerge.
I’m up to 100 and hope to finish by the end of next week, so I’ll be ready. I read through it about a year ago, so I’m ahead of the game, and I’ll be more or less prepared for the discussion.
Demosthenes’ entire career is on the line. Many of the major events in Greek history from the end of the Peloponnesian War down to 330 (the date of the speech) are at least mentioned, with particular focus on the crucial years from the Peace of Philocrates (346) to the disastrous (for Athens and Thebes) Battle of Chaeronea (338), when Philip consolidated his hold on Greece. You have to read Demosthenes’ account recognizing that he isn’t always reliable, but of course this is how historians piece together history from original sources.
If you’re interested in Greek history, even if you don’t feel you can read all of it in Greek, you might try reading some of it, if only a few sections each week, in Greek and the rest in English or another language–plenty of translations are available, including some on line.
I strongly recommend using the Yunis edition in the Cambridge Greek and Latin series. The notes give a lot of help with the Greek and are very up to date in terms of Greek history.
I read Yunis’ introduction earlier this week and now attacked the Greek text. I have to say I was a bit surprised by its difficulty. There’s no question of making any progress without checking a translation at every second line. But I’m not complaining – with my limited knowledge of Attic, I have the feeling that the difficulties are the result of a concentration of Attic idioms and getting over them will greatly improve my Attic prose reading skills. I compare this with my even more limited knowledge of Thucydides, another difficult author, whose text is a concentration of Thucydidean idiosyncrasies, which somehow I feel will get me nowhere…
I don’t understand how ἀλλ᾽ ἐμοὶ μὲν— is connected with what follows (—οὐ βούλομαι etc). Apparently it’s not? How I understand this is that Demosthenes stops his sentence in the middle and reformulates it after the dash. Am I correct?
I don’t understand ἔνι τῷ φεύγοντι παρελθεῖν, particularly not the word ἔνι. I see that it goes with τὰς αἰτίας καὶ τὰς διαβολάς. Does ἔνι stand for ἔνεστι? If not, I’m totally at a loss with it.
ἀλλ᾽ ἐμοὶ μὲν – aposiopesis. “For me–well, I don’t want to say anything unpleasant right when I’m starting my speech.” ἐμοὶ μὲν is picked up by οὗτος δ᾽ “But my opponent has an advantage in accusing me.” (“My opponent is accusing me from a position of advantage.”)
“seeing that the defendant can’t get beyond the accusations and slanders which the prosecutor is able to plant as a result of his speaking first”
Since it’s so long, and it’s not easy Greek, I’m going to post some selections of highlights once I finish, which should be next week, if anyone doesn’t have the time to work through the whole thing but wants some exposure to this great speech. In the meantime, I’d encourage you to try working through the initial sections.
