Thirteen Declamations

STUDY 1.

...of much [care], lest the enemy enter within unnoticed while the guards are negligent. But I do not think that man [the accuser] acts with such ill-will, nor should I be charged with a tyrannical mindset simply because I acquired full suits of armor for the sake of the city.

What was I even looking for¹ when I allegedly attempted to rule as a tyrant? Was it so I might gain some additional glory and honor? Or was it to acquire more wealth? Or perhaps to step upon a glorious name²? In these matters, what "excess" did I leave³ for any other citizen to surpass me? Did you yourselves not establish me in such high honor that I held the rank of a father to the whole people demos: the citizen body, and was able to lead you where it was necessary, and prevent you from staying where it was not⁴? Who else but me received the title of "flattery" and was accused of speaking to the public for the sake of favor rather than for the best interest? This was because I had such great leeway from you; I could restrain those who were not "sick" [politically restless] and lead out those who were, and persuade you in whatever I wished. Who was it that urged you to dishonor the Spartan original: "Lakonian" embassy and, despite our current fortune, to carry the war into the Peloponnese? Disregarding how many other generals and orators were advising you toward ease⁵, you accepted my counsel alone as the best of all,

¹ Scholion: Desire or will.
² A poetic expression "to step upon a glorious name," which I illustrated regarding this very passage in Anecdota p. 360. Add the interpreters on Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus line 180. Examples from prose authors are rarer. Lucian, The Astrologer 8: "The Libyans stepped upon the account." Again, our author [Pachymeres] in Declamation IV; and in his History of Andronicus 2, 19, p. 155: "considered a private woman because her husband, while living, was deemed worthy to step upon no high office." "Private woman" is Bekker’s Immanuel Bekker (1785–1871), a prolific German philologist emendation for the common "private state," which the manuscript confirms. Choricius a 6th-century rhetorician, p. 81: "You ascended here to piety."
³ Regarding the formula of speech "to leave no excess," I discussed this passage of Pachymeres in Anecdota p. 360. Firmus, Letter 41: "A wicked woman... leaving no excess of wickedness in adding sins upon sins."

⁴ See Thucydides 1, 127; 2, 65; Aristides, Oration 46, p. 162, 163. Other examples in Greek Anecdota, vol. V, p. 360.
⁵ Thucydides 1, 139. — The Manuscript says "to us." The identical pronunciation of the vowels eta (η) and upsilon (υ) This is called iotacism, where different vowels began to sound like the English "ee" is the reason why pronouns, which differ only in sense, are everywhere swapped by scribes. An anonymous poet quoted by Eustathius, p. 1484: "The region of Cilicia and the turnings of the Seres." For "Seres" [the Chinese], it seems to the learned man that "Syrians" should be read. The first name should have been expelled entirely due to the metrical quantity, yet it is allowed to keep its place in the text. To what good have you made a fine conjecture, if you allow the error to remain? There are critics who are a bit bolder, and those who are more timid. When a commentator on [Aristophanes'] Plutus interpreted the word melle [delay], line 766, with bradyne [slow down], Hemsterhusius Tiberius Hemsterhuis (1685–1766), a Dutch philologist, religiously fearing to change the syllable di to du, noted that this was the writing custom of later Greeks. This saying...