Lycurgus must have tried the patience of his hearers by his lengthy quotations from the poets. No other orator, perhaps, would have dared to recite fifty-five lines of Euripides and to follow them, after a short extract from Homer, with thirty-two lines of Tyrtaeus. Aeschines, no doubt, was fond of quoting, but his extracts are comparatively short and generally to the point; he can make good use of a single couplet. Demosthenes too, in capping his great adversary’s quotations, observed moderation and season. But the long quotations in Lycurgus are superfluous; that from Euripides is a mere excrescence, for he has already summarized in half a dozen lines the story from which he draws his moral; and the only purpose in telling the story at all is to introduce the refrain ‘Leocrates is quite a different kind of person.’ In this matter Lycurgus lacks taste—that is to say, he lacks a sense of proportion; but for all that he is felt to be speaking naturally quite according to his own character; he is attaining the highest _ethos_ by being himself. We know his interest in the tragedians from the fact that he caused an official copy of the plays to be preserved; and though religious motives would suffice to account for this decree, probably personal feeling, the statesman’s private affection for the works which he thus perpetuated, to some degree influenced his judgment. Though he may be unskilful, if judged by technical standards, Lycurgus impresses us by his dignified manner. He will not condescend to any rhetorical device which might detract from this dignity. He has no personal abuse for his opponent; he promises to keep to the specific charge with which the trial is concerned,[425] and at the end of the speech can justly claim that he has done so.[426] Though it may lay him open to the suspicion of sycophancy, he disclaims any personal enmity against Leocrates; he professes to be impelled entirely by patriotic motives, and we believe him.[427] He may seem to us excessively severe; we may regard the crime of Leocrates as nothing worse than cowardice; but we are convinced that to Lycurgus it appeared as the greatest of all crimes; and the Athenian assembly too was apparently so convinced.[428]