Athenian

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 390, 13 December 1946, Page 11

Athenian

ICHARD SINGER, whose talks on Great Figures of the Bar I have commended before in this Viewsreel, has displayed another praiseworthy trait in following up his Cicero with Demosthenes. This great Athenian is best known

for his speeches urging the citizens to resist. the encroachments of Macedonian aggression — someone recently emphasised their | Churchillian quality by publishing long extracts with "Germany" substituted for "Macedon," "Britain" for Athens,

and "Czechoslovakia" for the unlucky buffer state of Olynthus. But Demosthenes was also a practising pleader in the Athenian courts, and Mr. Singer enumerated cases of his concerning legacies, watercourses, and rights of citizenship. Mr. Singer’s virtue is that he does not apologise for classical knowledge, as do too many to-day, vaguely fearing that their listeners may be right in condemning it as umnprogressive; he speaks unashamedly of the conflicting views of eminent scholars; he dares, ta assume that his public know something and will be interested to know more. Demosthenes — the mame means "strength of the people"-is a disputed figure in history, as Mr. Singer did right to remind us. He defended the localised, in a sense parochial, civilisation of the Greek cities, against the expansive, far-reaching military ‘empires, of which the Macedonian was the first and the Roman last, who carried that civilisation as far as arms would take it, ‘to Britain and the Indian borders, at the cost of breaking its political freedom and cheapening its greatest qualities. Which was in the right? Should civilisation limit its geographical scope and heighten its qualities, or go forth and convert, if necessary lowering its standards to do so?’ The question semaine unanswered.