Note 147:1 — Chapter VII

It is nevertheless not likely that Hypereides was personally intimate with Demosthenes, for he was not, as is usually stated, his contemporary, but a man of a younger generation, as I have argued in my Greek Lit. ii. 2, p. 371. I invite the critics either to refute or to accept the arguments there stated.

I can now cite several scholars of the first magnitude whose estimate of Demosthenes agrees in almost every detail with what I had argued in my History of Greek Literature. They are H. Weil, in his admirable edition of Demosthenes (Paris, 1886), and Holm in the third volume of his History (1891), especially the passage (pp. 247-9), which shows that there is now a general tendency to judge Demosthenes less leniently than Grote and Schäfer have done. Beloch, Sittl, Spengel, and other considerable critics are quoted in his summary. It is no small satisfaction to me to see the opinions I put forth in the first edition of Social Life in Greece (1871), which were then treated as paradoxes, now adopted, quite independently, by a large body of the best critics. I do not, however, think that they have sufficiently appreciated the low standard of political honesty at Athens, as compared with ours. This affords the best apology for Demosthenes' faults. He was, after all, the child of his time.