On the False Embassy

He cared for none of these obligations; he took no thought that the ship of state should sail on even keel; he scuttled her and sank her, and so far as in him lay put her at the mercy of her foes. Are not you then a charlatan? Yes, and a vile one too. Are not you a speech-writer? Yes, and an unprincipled one to boot. You passed over the speech that you so often spoke on the stage, and knew by heart; you hunted up rant that in all your career you had never declaimed in character, and revived it for the undoing of your own fellow-citizen.

Let us now turn to his remarks about Solon. By way of censure and reproach of the impetuous style of Timarchus, he alleged that a statue of Solon, with his robe drawn round him and his hand enfolded, had been set up to exemplify the self-restraint of the popular orators of that generation. People who live at Salamis, however, inform us that this statue was erected less than fifty years ago. Now from the age of Solon to the present day about two hundred and forty years have elapsed, so that the sculptor who designed that disposition of drapery had not lived in Solon’s time,—nor even his grand-father.