Aeschines paid tribute to the oratory of his greatest rival — whether he meant to or not.
Aeschines (389-314 BC) and Demosthenes (384-322 BC) were lawyers and statesmen of Athens, and rivals. Cicero, a Roman lawyer of a later generation, knew of their competitive relationship, and told this story to illustrate both their strength of feeling and also, hidden deeper than even Aeschines realised, their mutual respect.
Cicero warns those who seek power through civic unrest that they will never be the beneficiaries of it.
In 63 BC, Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC) accused Lucius Sergius Catilina of scheming to overthrow the Republic. In exposing the plot, he warned the Senate against five kinds of political troublemaker, including those who stir up ill-feeling and violence at home, hoping to be the beneficiaries of it.