Chapter 16: Oaths

Here is the place where figures are arranged in order; you see, these— if they are handled as they ought to be—would not (as I said) be a small part of greatness. But since to be thoroughly precise about all of them would be a big job at present—rather, a limitless one—for the sake of confirming what was laid down before, I shall actually go through a few—as many as contribute to greatness in address. 2. Demosthenes brings in a demonstration on behalf of his political positions. What would have been natural usage?

You have not made a mistake, you who have taken up the struggle on behalf of Greek freedom. You have examples that are at home with this, for those at Mara­ thon did not make a mistake, nor those at Salamis or Plataea.

But indeed, as if he had suddenly been inspired by a divinity and, as it were, had been taken over by Apollo, he gave voice to his oath, swearing by the most excellent men of Greece-

It is not possible that you were mistaken—by those who faced the danger at Marathon—

In this one figure the oath (which I call apostrophe) he made divinities of his ancestors, and stirred us to swear as if they were divinities, and he put into the souls of the judges a sense of those who risked danger for Athens, and he changed the nature of a demonstrative argument into a surpassing sublimity and emotion and a proof worthy of those strange oaths that go beyond nature, and simultaneously he sent his speech into the souls of those hearing like some antidote and cure, so that his hearers, lightened by the encomia, are made to take their stand and think themselves no less in fighting against Philip than they were at their victory prizes at Marathon and Salamis; in all of this his point of departure is the figure, having caught up his audience with him. 3. And certainly, they say, the seed of the oath is found in Eupolis:

By the fight at Marathon,
No one will take joy in giving my heart an ache.

But it is no great thing for anyone to swear by anything at all; what is most important is where and how and at what critical moment and for what purpose. But though in Eupolis there is nothing except the oath-made when the Athenians still had good luck and did not need exhortatory address, the poet did not make men deathless in his oath so that he might implant in those who heard him a speech worthy of their excellence, but he wandered away from those who risked danger to something without a soul-a fight. In Demosthenes the oath is practical, made to those who had been worsted, so that Chaeronea should no longer seem to the Athenians a misfortune; and at the same time, as I said, the very same oath is a demonstration that they have not made a mistake—it is an example, a proof, an encomium, an encouragement. 4. And since someone might confront the speaker, saying—

Do you talk of defeat when you have made the policy, and then do you swear an oath by victories? —

because of this he consistently regulates and safely leads his words, teaching us that even in Dionysiac revels it is necessary to be sober: he says

Those who risked danger at Marathon and who fought on the seas at Salamis and Artemisium, and who fought in the ranks at Plataea.

Nowhere does he say “having been victorious;” but everywhere he has, like a thief, kept back the word “victorious” from the outcome, since indeed there the luck was good but was the opposite of that at Chaeronea. For this reason also, anticipating the audience, he directly adds:

… all of whom the city buried, Aeschines, not only those who kept things upright.