detected in giving rather than taking unjustly?" And Cicero, when Metellus told him that he had destroyed more as a witness than he had got acquitted as an advocate, answered, "Who denies that my honesty is greater than my eloquence?" Compare such sayings of Demosthenes as, "Who would not have been justified in killing me, had I tried in word only to impair the ancient glory of our city?"10 And, "What think you these wretches would have said, if the states had departed, when I was curiously discussing these points?"11 And indeed the whole of that speech On the Crown most ingeniously introduces his own praises in his antitheses, and answers to the charges brought against him.
§ ix. However it is worth while to notice in his speech that he most artistically inserts praise of his audience in the remarks about himself, and so makes his speech less egotistical and less likely to raise envy. Thus he shows how the Athenians behaved to the Eubœans and to the Thebans, and what benefits they conferred on the people of Byzantium and on the Chersonese, claiming for himself only a subordinate part in the matter. Thus he cunningly insinuates into the audience with his own praises what they will gladly hear, for they rejoice at the enumeration of their successes,12 and their joy is succeeded by admiration and esteem for the person to whom the success was due. So also Epaminondas, when Meneclidas once jeered at him as thinking more of himself than Agamemnon ever did, replied, "It is your fault then, men of Thebes, by whose help alone I put down the power of the Lacedæmonians in one day."
§ x. But since most people very much dislike and object to a man's praising himself, but if he praises some one else are on the contrary often glad and readily bear him out, some are in the habit of praising in season those that have the same pursuits business and characters as themselves, and so conciliate and move the audience in their own favour; for the audience know at the moment such a one is speaking that, though he is speaking about another, yet his own similar virtue is worthy of their