Democracy in Diminished Times

Adam Smith’s Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres presents Demosthenes, alongside Cicero, as basic to education in rhetoric and humanism. His speeches before the Athenian Assembly are marked, observes Smith, by “austere Severity,” whereas Cicero, navigating Roman politics, is all pomp and flattery. James Romm, Professor of Classics at Bard College, reasons in Demosthenes: Democracy’s Defender that Demosthenes’ style had much to do with the fact that he “lived in diminished times.”