On the Crown

Evening had already fallen when a messenger arrived bringing to the presiding councillors[*](presiding councillors: the fifty representatives on the Council of that one of the ten tribes within whose term of administrative duty the meeting fell.) the news that Elatea had been taken. They were sitting at supper, but they instantly rose from table, cleared the booths in the marketplace of their occupants, and unfolded the hurdles,[*](unfolded the hurdles: they were tied together hinge-wise, and, when unfolded, formed barriers, either to keep out strangers (Dem. 59.90) or to block streets leading from the marketplace elsewhere than to the Pnyx, where the assembly met (Schol. on Aristoph. Ach. 22). Unfolded is a conjectural reading derived from the scholium cited; but no satisfactory explanation is forthcoming of the reading of all MSS., set fire to the hurdles.) while others summoned the commanders and ordered the attendance of the trumpeter. The commotion spread through the whole city. At daybreak on the morrow the presidents summoned the Council to the Council House, and the citizens flocked to the place of assembly. Before the Council could introduce the business and prepare the agenda, the whole body of citizens had taken their places on the hill.

The Council arrived, the presiding Councillors formally reported the intelligence they had received, and the courier was introduced. As soon as he had told his tale, the marshal put the question, Who wishes to speak? No one came forward. The marshal repeated his question again and again, but still no one rose to speak, although all the commanders were there, and all the orators, and although the country with her civic voice was calling for the man who should speak for her salvation; for we may justly regard the voice, which the crier raises as the laws direct, as the civic voice of our country.

Now had it been the duty of every man who desired the salvation of Athens to come forward, all of you, aye, every Athenian citizen, would have risen in your places and made your way to the tribune, for that salvation, I am well assured, was the desire of every heart. If that duty had fallen upon the wealthy, the Three Hundred would have risen; if upon those who were alike wealthy and patriotic, the men who thereafter gave those generous donations which signalized at once their wealth and their patriotism.

But, it seems, the call of the crisis on that momentous day was not only for the wealthy patriot but for the man who from first to last had closely watched the sequence of events, and had rightly fathomed the purposes and the desires of Philip; for anyone who had not grasped those purposes, or had not studied them long beforehand, however patriotic and however wealthy he might be, was not the man to appreciate the needs of the hour, or to find any counsel to offer to the people.