Demosthenes and Cicero were the orators who stood against the man ending their republic. Demosthenes spent his public life trying to make Athens resist Macedon. Cicero broke Catiline and then died for the speeches against Antony.

Plutarch calls Cicero's exile the honorable one, and Demosthenes' conviction a disgrace. He then turns it: Cicero sat quiet in Macedonia, while Demosthenes' exile still served Athens, and it is the manner of Demosthenes' death that he asks the reader to admire.