Demosthenes

and that when men were amazed at the suddenness of his death the Thracians who had stood at the door told the story that he took the poison into his hand from a cloth and put it to his mouth and swallowed it; and that they themselves, strange to say, had supposed that what he swallowed was gold; and that the little maid who served him, when inquiries were made by Archias, said that Demosthenes had long worn that cloth girdle as a safeguard against his enemies.

And even Eratosthenes himself says that Demosthenes kept the poison in a hollow bracelet, and that he wore this bracelet as an ornament upon his arm. But the divergent stories of all the others who have written about the matter, and they are very many, need not be recounted;

except that Demochares the relative of Demosthenes says that in his opinion it was not due to poison, but to the honour and kindly favour shown him by the gods, that he was rescued from the cruelty of the Macedonians by a speedy and painless death. And he died on the sixteenth of the month Pyanepsion, the most gloomy day of the Thesmophoria,[*](An annual festival in honour of Demeter and Persephone.) which the women observe by fasting in the temple of the goddess.

It was to this man, a little while after his death, that the Athenian people paid worthy honour by erecting his statue[*](This statue, the work of Polyeuctus, was erected in 280-279 B.C., on motion of Demochares, a nephew of Demosthenes. The well-known marble statue of Demosthenes in the Vatican is thought to be a copy of it. See Pausanias i. 8, 2, with Frazer’s notes.) in bronze, and by decreeing that the eldest of his house should have public maintenance in the prytaneium. And this celebrated inscription was inscribed upon the pedestal of his statue:—

1. If thy strength had only been equal to thy purposes,
2. Demosthenes,
3. Never would the Greeks have been ruled by a
4. Macedonian Ares.