Gentlemen of Heaven, in preference to great
riches you would choose, I am sure, to learn why it
is that you are now assembled. This being so, it
behoves you to give my words an attentive hearing.
The present crisis, gods, all but breaks out in
speech and says that we must grapple stoutly with
the issues of the day, but we, it seems to me, are
treating them with great indifference.Compare the beginning of Demosthenes’ first Olynthiac. I now
Jesire—my Demosthenes is running short, you see
—to tell you plainly what it was that disturbed me
nd mmade me call the meeting.
Yesterday, as you know, when Mnesitheus the
1ip-captain made the offering for the deliverance of
's slip, which came near being lost off Caphereus,
e banqueted at Piraeus, those of us whom
nesitheus asked to the sacrifice. Then, after the
atioms, you all went in different directions, wherpy each of you thought fit, but I myself, as it was
Every late, went up to town to take my evening
stroll in the Potters’ Quarter, reflecting as I went
upon the stinginess of Mnesitheus. ‘To feast sixteen gods he had sacrificed only a cock, and a
wheezy old cock at that, and four cakes of frankincense that were thoroughly well mildewed, so that
they went right out on the coals and didn’t even
give off enough smoke to smell with the tip of your
nose ; and yet he had promised whole herds of cattle
while the ship was drifting on the rock and was
inside the ledges.