Edited by JOHN RICHARD Green 
 
 DEMOSTHENES 
 
 BY 
 
 S. H. BUTCHER, M.A. 
 
 hry*0!*'<^ FELLOW AND PRAELECTOR OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, OXFORD ; 
 ' FORMERLY FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE 
 
 3Lottt(0n 
 
 MACMILLAN & CO. 
 
 1881 
 
9^ 
 
 C O N T E x\ T S. 
 
 CHAPTEH PACE 
 
 I. The Age of Demosthenes . . . . i 
 
 H. Ills Public Life and Speeches. Early 
 
 Period 27 
 
 III. His Plhlic Life and Speeches. From the 
 
 Rise of Macedon to the Fall of 
 Olynthus (348 B.C.) 50 
 
 IV. His Public Life and Speeches. Prom the 
 
 Fall of Olynthus to the Peace of 
 Philocrates (346 B.C.) 77 
 
 V. His Public Life and Speeches. From the 
 Peace of Philocrates (346 b.c.) to 
 Ch.i:ronfjv (338 B.C.) 91 
 
 VI. His Public Life and Speeches. From 
 
 CHiCRONEA (338 B.C.) TO HIS DEATH (322 li.C.) II3 
 
 VII. His Private Speeches 129 
 
 VIII. Demosihenks as a Statesman and an Orator 141 
 
 Table of vhe Wokks of Demosthenes . 170 
 
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 DEMOSTHENES. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE AGE OF DEMOSTHENES. 
 
 In the fifth century e.g., when Greece for the first 
 time had to face a foreign foe, there were silent forces at 
 work which needed only such a crisis to call them into 
 active life. At the time of the Persian invasion, the 
 sentiment of unity took shape under Athenian leader- 
 ship, and overpowered the instincts of isolation. In 
 the latter half of the fourth century B.C., when Greek 
 freedom was again menaced, no such united front could 
 be offered. The city life, on which Greek civilisation 
 rested, had proved wanting in vital and expansive 
 power, nor was its early promise of confederation ful- 
 filled. 
 
 The fall of Athens at the close of the Peloponnesian 
 Avar had left a void in the Hellenic world which Sparta 
 could not fill. Sparta's claim was that of a liberator; 
 her nominal principle was the independence of all 
 cities, great and small. In effect she knew but one 
 rule of policy — force in its most undisguised and brutal 
 form. She had none of that Athenian generosity and 
 broad culture which had softened, if it had not re- 
 deemed, the harshness of empire. The thirty four 
 years of Spartan supremacy, from Aegospotami (405 
 B.C.) to Leuctra (371 e.g.), were years charged with 
 mischief Wherever tov/ns or villages were beginning 
 
 ^ B 
 
2 • • D£MOSTHENES. [chap. i. 
 
 to Qnite,- Spafta- stept'in and dissolved each such 
 nascent society into its barest elements. Indepen- 
 dence with her meant, what similar professions 
 afterwards meant in the mouth of Macedon and of 
 Rome, isolation and dismemberment. The work of 
 liberation began with vengeance and bloodshed. " The 
 Spartans," says Isocrates, in a weighty indictment'- 
 against Spartan misrule, " in three months put to death 
 without trial greater numbers than Athens had. put on 
 trial during the whole period of her empire." Between 
 the promise and the performance of Sparta there was all 
 the difference between a Brasidas and a Lysander. The 
 peace of .Antalcidas (3S7 B.C.), negotiated by Sparta 
 between Persia and Greece, may be taken as an epi- 
 tome of her policy. The Greeks of Asia were by it 
 given over to Persia — a deliberate surrender of a 
 sacred Greek tradition. Some seven or eight years 
 later, Isocrates, writing of these lonians, says: — "They 
 suffer worse outrage, even in their persons, than bought 
 slaves of Athens. No Athenian maltreats his servants 
 as their masters chastise freemen.'- The same treaty 
 had guaranteed the independence of the European 
 Greeks ; and as a coriiment on this Isocrates recalls 
 how Sparta devastated Mantinea, laid treacherous hands 
 on Thebes, besieged Olynthus and Phlius, levied 
 blackmail on the islands, allied herself with Amyntas 
 of Macedon, Dionysius of Syracuse, and all the 
 despots who threatened Greek freedom. Not the 
 least ruinous part of this treaty was the express recog- 
 nition of the Great King as having the disjio.'^al of 
 Greek affairs, Sparta being made executor of his com- 
 mands. Already, at a time when Persian gold was 
 needed to replenish the f;\iling exchequers of Greece, 
 he had interfered as paymaster ; he now apj)ears as 
 arbiter. The day was not far off when a foreigner 
 yet more dangerous would assume a like office. 
 * Fane^v. § 113. ' Paru^^'. § 123. 
 
CHAP. I.] THE AGE OF DEMOSTHENES. 3 
 
 Another distinctive act of Spartan policy may be 
 noticed. In 3S4 B.C., Olynthus in Chalcidice was at 
 the head of a growing league of cities bound together 
 on Hberal terms of union. There is a special interest 
 in this, one of the earliest efforts at federal govern- 
 ment, and we would gladly know more of the details 
 of organisation than have been told us by Xenophon. 
 This much, however, is clear, that each city of the 
 league, while retaining its own constitution, had laws 
 and franchise in common with the other members, 
 and mutual rights of marriage and of holding pro- 
 perty. The neighbouring cities on the coast, and 
 some towns of Macedon, including Pella, took advan- 
 tage of the security afforded by the league ; but two 
 Chalcidic cities. Acanthus and Apollonia, clung to 
 their independence, and, backed by Amyntas IL, King 
 of Macedon, applied to Sparta for aid. Sparta, ever 
 jealous of confederation, sent her armies against Olyn- 
 thus. In 379 B.C. the city was at last surrendered, 
 and the league dissolved. Not till about thirty years 
 later was the fatal meaning of this act discovered. A 
 power which might have stood a firm barrier for the 
 Greeks of the North against Macedonian aggression ^ 
 had been broken down. 
 
 Thus Sparta everywhere employed the name of 
 freedom to destroy the reality. Working on illusory 
 hopes, and fostering a narrow communal spirit, she 
 undid in the brief period of her rule whatever had 
 been done for Greece by Athens. The disintegrating 
 forces, which had been for a while arrested, now pre- 
 vailed. The genius, indeed, of Epaminondas AVTought 
 in an opposite direction ; and the nine years from 
 Leuctra (371 B.C.) to Mantinea (362 b.c.) were 
 marked by a generous attempt to repair something of 
 this ruin. But with Epaminondas Theban supremacy 
 passed away, and Thebes relapsed into her former self. 
 
 Meanwhile a new Naval Confederacy had been 
 
4 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. i. 
 
 formed at Athens (378 n.c.) on the model of the Con- 
 federacy of Delos, but with safeguards against the old 
 abuses. It was joined by Chios, Byzantium, Rhodes, 
 Mytilene, and embraced in all about seventy maritime 
 or island cities, whom Spartan harmosts and Persian 
 despots had driven to seek some organised protection. 
 Nothing could well have seemed more hopeful than 
 the league in its beginnings. The internal constitu- 
 tion of each state was left untouched ; the odious 
 " tribute " {4>6f)os) with its imperial associations was 
 exchanged for the " contribution " (o-i'i'Ta^i?) ; and 
 the amount of each contribution was to be assessed 
 at a representative council held at Athens. Then 
 came the difficulty of maintaining the equal rights of 
 all the members. History began to repeat itself; 
 contingents had to be raised and payment enforced ; 
 the Athenian spirit of conquest was revived, and 
 deficiencies of revenue were made up by acts of 
 violence and extortion. The allies soon began to fall 
 away, and in 357 B.C. openly revolted. Once the 
 federal bonds were snapped by the Social ^^'a^, there 
 was no effective control over the Aegean waters, which 
 were overrun by corsair fleets, and preyed on by Persia 
 or by tyrants of the Asiatic coast. The strength of 
 Athens was fatally impaired, and the permanent dis- 
 union of Greece laid bare. Of all this there was one 
 interested spectator. Philip of Macedon, two years 
 before the Social War began, had come to the throne 
 (359 BC.) 
 
 AV'hile the Greek states were being detached from 
 the national life of Greece, the tie between each state 
 and its members was similarly loosened. \\'ith the 
 decay of Panhellenic patriotism went also the decay 
 of the civic virtues. Our main authorities for this 
 period are the writings of the orators ; and, as some 
 one has obsen-ed, it would be almost as absurd to 
 form our estimate of ancient societv solelv from the 
 
CHAr. I.] THE AGE OF DEMOSTHENES. 5 
 
 works of orators and poets as it would be to judge 
 modern society simply by its sermons. Yet, when 
 writers of such different casts of mind as Isocrates and 
 Demosthenes agree in discovering the same tendencies, 
 and denouncing the same evils — widely as they differ 
 in the cures they prescribe — and when their reflections 
 are borne out by unquestioned facts of history, we 
 may safely accept the outlines of their picture. 
 
 The one mortal disease, whose workings can be 
 traced in manifold ways, was the severance of the 
 individual from the state ; everywhere private needs 
 were superseding public claims. 
 
 A waning interest in political life is seen first in the 
 Athenian Assembly. Thinned by pestilence, war, and 
 exile, the civic body was largely recruited from foreign- 1/^ 
 ers; and though the process was a necessary one, it was 
 passionately lamented by Isocrates. In his pamphlet 
 On the Peace (355 B.C.) he exclaims: "We who are 
 so proud of our superior birth care less to keep our 
 nobility to ourselves against every new-comer, than do 
 Triballi and Leucani to preserve the doubtful purity of 
 their blood" (§ 50). He lays the blame down to the 
 liist of maritime empire to which the old families, that 
 had survived the days of the tyranny and of the 
 Persian wars, were sacrificed. " Gradually our rulers 
 found that they had filled the public tombs with 
 citizens and the public registers with aliens." Athens 
 had not in the same degree as Rome the power of 
 absorbing strangers, and of making its franchise a 
 privilege to be coveted ; and Demosthenes, like 
 Isocrates, complains that Athenian citizenship, once 
 valued, was now degraded. ^ Aristocrats began to y/ 
 look on politics as disreputable ; the wealthy merchants, 
 too, many of whom were luetics, not citizens, took but 
 a slight part in public life. A poorer class now pre- 
 ponderated in the Assembly, which in part consisted 
 ^ Dem Aristocr. § 201. 
 
6 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. i. 
 
 of a needy rabble, to whom politics and spectacles were 
 daily bread. " One comes and another goes, but no 
 one cares for the public good."^ Important motions 
 were sometimes carried without any one knowing what 
 had happened. The difficulty, too, of keeping order 
 in the Assembly seems to have become so serious that 
 a special police regulation for the protection of the 
 chair was passed shortly before 345 B.c The mem- 
 bers of the tribe to which the Chairman belonged were 
 ranged round him as a bodyguard. - A certain Aris- 
 togeiton in particular achieved evil distinction by a 
 persistent and noisy impudence, " overriding the laws, 
 the orders of the day {rov TrpoypdfifjiaTos), and public 
 decency.""* Frequent laws were carried to benefit 
 indi\-iduals, and these were sometimes made retro- 
 spective.'* Indeed, the statute book was full of 
 contradictory enactments, passed for occasional pur- 
 poses, and without regular formalities.^ Demos- 
 thenes (Z<'//. § 92) singles it out as one great blot 
 in Athenian government, that decrees of the people 
 had acquired more validity than the laws. And 
 Aristotle i^Polit. vi. 4) sees here the note of a per- 
 verted democracy, such as was in no sense a con- 
 stitution. Similar in purport is a saying of his 
 recorded by Diogenes I^aertius (v. 17), that whereas 
 wheat and laws were among the discoveries of Athens, 
 the wlieat was used but the laws were not used. 
 
 The growing indifference of the ordinary citizen 
 towards politics tended to leave the administration in 
 inferior hands. After Pericles, there had been a rapid 
 descent to Cleon and Hyperbolus, and the demagogue 
 of the fourth century is drawn for us as one who 
 studied the art of flattering the masses. Demosthenes 
 
 1 Deni. Embassy, § 136. 
 
 5 Cf. Aesch. Timarch. % 33. 
 
 ' [Dem.] Aristogfit. § 9 ; cf. Exordium 53. 
 
 * Dcrn. Timocr. § I16. » Dem. Lept. %% 90, 91. 
 
CHAP. I.] THE AGE OF DEMOSTHENES. 7 
 
 describes the people as like some tame animal led about 
 by his keeper, who ministers to his lower wants ^ (p. 74). 
 The Great Beast of Plato, humoured and pampered, 
 occurs to us as the companion picture. Such descrip- 
 tions do not, indeed, give us the whole truth. A people 
 who revered personal integrity so far as to elect Pho- 
 cion forty-five times general ; who, even after defeat, 
 did not desert Demosthenes ; who at the last were 
 guided by Hypereides and Lycurgus, cannot have been 
 as degenerate as has sometimes been supposed. Poli- 
 tical tact never wholly failed them ; but their moral 
 fibre was weakened, they had many lapses, and could 
 not long sustain themselves at the higher level. Signs 
 were not wanting that the democracy was losing faith 
 in its own virtue and capacity, and was not far from 
 a voluntary abdication of its functions. The forms 
 and vital usages of the constitution were suffered to 
 fall into disuse. Ordinary law was not enforced. 
 Never since the Areopagus was divested of its ancient 
 privileges had that body been so frequently invoked , 
 to wield exceptional powers as during the contest 
 with Macedon. The extravagant rewards, too, and the 
 homage paid to political leaders indicated a secret 
 self-contempt 2 on the part of the people — a temper 
 peculiarly dangerous in a city where personal influ- 
 ence was supreme. 
 
 At Athens, it must be remembered, there was 
 nothing corresponding exactly to a Ministry in our 
 modern sense. The Assembly had no responsible 
 leaders, and those with whom the real power lay were 
 not necessarily those who held official position. The 
 ordinary magistrates, appointed by lot and for a single 
 year, and subject to dismissal at any moment, could 
 not be expected to carry out any continuous policy or 
 show special competence. The ten generals, though 
 their office was elective, and a certain fitness was so far 
 ^ Olynth. ii. § 31. - Dem. Aristocr. § 209. 
 
8 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. i. 
 
 guaranteed, exercised powers that were too much sub- 
 divided to be effective. The one official body that 
 had any real control over the details of administration 
 was the Council of Five Hundred. All measures were 
 submitted to them before they could be proposed in 
 the Assembly. At the beginning of each year they 
 examined the accounts of the outgoing magistrates, 
 and prepared a budget for the ensuing year. Many 
 also of the functions now vested in a Board of Public 
 Works or in the Admiralty devolved on them. But 
 they, too, held office only for a year, and owing to their 
 unwieldy size had to work through committees 
 (TrpiTaveis), each of which conducted public business 
 for so many weeks in its turn. The general principles 
 of policy were determined, not by the Council, but by 
 the regular speakers (pi'jTopci) of the Assembly, forming 
 as a rule a small group of ten or twenty men, who led 
 the debates, framed measures, and were the true poli- 
 ticians of Athens. So far as any permanent ^ element 
 entered into the conduct of affairs, it might be traced 
 to these unofficial rulers, to their personal influence 
 and direction. And though ministerial departments 
 in the strict sense were unknown, a man of sj)ecial 
 aptitude would devote himself to a single branch of 
 the administration ; and it was possible to be, as De- 
 mosthenes virtually was, Minister of Foreign Aflfairs 
 for a prolonged period without holding any official 
 appointment beyond an occasional post such as that 
 of ambassador. 
 
 Party government, then, strictly so called, did not 
 exist ; and party itself was hardly possible where 
 cohesion and principled union were lacking. The 
 
 ' The Trcasur)' w.ns the one department where some admini- 
 strative continuity was secured. The ".Steward of the Public 
 Revenue" (roju'oy t^s Koivfji irpoffdSov) — the nearest ajipro-ich 
 to our Chancellor of the Exchequer — was elected for a term of 
 four years. Lycurg\is held the office for twelve years in all. 
 
CHAP. I.] THE AGE OF DEMOSTHENES. 9 
 
 Assembly naturally fell under a shifting clique manage- 
 ment Demosthenes tells us of a " certain band of 
 veteran orators"^ who possessed the ear of the house, 
 and silenced " private members " (ol tStwrat). Of 
 another similar faction we elsewhere " read : "As 
 though they were not members of a free common- 
 wealth, where each and all have therefore a right to 
 speak, but as if the constitution were an exclusive 
 priesthood of their own, they are indignant if any man 
 speaks up honestly in your presence, and they call him 
 audacious. , . . They bid you crown and not crown 
 whom they choose, and make their own will supreme 
 over the resolutions of the house." It was doubtless 
 to secure the neutrality of the chair, and to prevent 
 the managing committee of the house from asserting 
 a corrupt or despotic influence, that the rules for 
 appointing a Chairman of the Assembly were altered 
 in the fourth century B.C. ^ 
 
 A passage in the Second Olynthiac gives us an 
 insight into the character of a political clique based 
 on an alliance between generals and orators. The 
 organisation of this coterie is compared to the legal 
 organisation for collecting the property-tax (et'o-^opa) 
 by means of Boards (o-i'/x/xopiai), whose Three Hundred 
 wealthiest members advanced the money for the other 
 ratepayers, and so acquired a dominant influence. 
 Each Board was presided over by a chairman (i^ye/xwv), 
 
 ^ Androt. § 37. 
 
 - Dem.(?) Trier arch. Crown, §§ 19, 22. 
 
 ^ In the fifth century B.C. the managing committee {vpvTa.vei%), 
 who, it must be observed, all belonged to the same tribe, appointed 
 the chairman of the day by lot from their own number. Their 
 tribe was called the Trpvravevova-a (pvX-rj. In the fourth century B. C 
 the chairman was one of nine />rocJn' {wpoedpoi), each of whom 
 represented one of the tribes other than the wpvTavevovaa (pvX-^. 
 The tribe to which the chairman now belonged was called the 
 TTpoeopevovaa <pv\-q. Thus the iiriffTdTTji rOiv wpoidpui/ took the 
 place of the eincrTaT-qi tGiv irpvTavewv. 
 
10 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. i. 
 
 who had some other official (tVi/xeAv;-!-*/) immediately 
 subordinate to him. Upon similar lines were framed 
 political cliques, presided over by an orator (pv/rwp), 
 with a general (o-T/3aT7/yos) whom he patronised. The 
 rival wire-pullers, corresponding on each side to the 
 Three Hundred, raised their shout, and the rank 
 and file of the parties blindly followed their lead.^ 
 The system has its modern counterpart in certain 
 well-drilled party organisations both here and in 
 America. 
 
 The languid life of the Assembly was not reflected 
 in the law-courts. The press of business cannot, 
 indeed, have been what it was under the Athenian 
 hegemony when the causes of the allies were all tried 
 at Athens ; yet there were still jur}'men eager to serve 
 and litigants ready to supply cases. The judicial fee 
 fixed by Pericles at one obol a day, and trebled prob- 
 ably by Cleon, small as it was, sufficed to attract a 
 needy throng, who might be seen in the morning out- 
 side the courts " drawing lots for the doubtful chance 
 of daily bread."- Confiscation of property was one 
 of the means employed to help out a failing revenue;^ 
 and in the time of Lysias corrupt officials often told 
 the jury point-blank that unless they gave an adverse 
 verdict there would be no funds to pay their salaries.* 
 / Defendants, on the other hand, urged how much more 
 ^/ the state would profit if wealth were left in the hands 
 of ])atriotic owners.^ This practice of confiscation, 
 which Aristotle sjjeaks of as one of the causes which 
 
 ' Dem. Olynth. ii. § 29. " Formerly you used the Board 
 system for taxation {tiaeip^peTe kotA ffffi/ioplai), now you apply 
 the same system to politics {xo\iT(ve(r0c Kard. <Tvnnopiai). An 
 orator presides on either side ; there is a {general under him, and 
 the Three Hundred, whose business is to shout ; the rank and 
 file of you are told ofl' to one side or the other." 
 
 " Isocr. ^;w/>. § 54. ■' Lysias, Or. xxx. § 22. 
 
 * Lysias, Or. xxvii. § i. 
 
 " ^.^j;'." L)-sias, Or. xviii. §§ Jj-iJ- 
 
 y 
 
CHAP. I.] THE AGE OF DEMOSTHENES. ii 
 
 led to the ruin of democracies/ was less frequent in 
 the second half of the fourth century than at the close 
 of the Peloponnesian war ; it is mentioned, however, 
 by Demosthenes, as a method still in vogue among 
 "dashing" politicians.^ As lawsuits had to begot 
 up to provide a pittance for the mob, professional 
 accusers were found to do the work, making lucrative 
 jobs for themselves, and earning a reputation as good 
 democrats.^ " It is far more dangerous," says Isocrates, . 
 "to be suspected of wealth than to be an avowed w^ 
 criminal."^ Timid but opulent citizens would pur- 
 chase the silence of the informer rather than face the 
 courts. The praise of poverty in Xenophon's Syj?i- 
 posium ^ is only half ironical. As a rich man, says 
 Charmides, he was in constant dread of robbers and 
 sycophants. There was always some new tax to pay, 
 and it was impossible to go abroad and escape it. 
 But ever since he has been ruined and his property 
 sold up, his case is very different. " Stretched at full 
 length I sleep comfortably ; I am no longer threat- 
 ened ; it is I that threaten others. A free man I go 
 abroad or remain at home. The rich now rise in 
 my honour and give place to me from their seats 
 and on the road. To-day I am like a tjTant ; lately 
 I was unmistakably a slave. I then paid tribute 
 to the state ; to-day the state pays tribute and sup- 
 ports me. .... I lose nothing, for I have nothing 
 to lose, and I have always the hope of getting some- 
 thing." 
 
 Not only was extortion practised by professional 
 accusers, but the tribunal itself was frequently corrupt. *^ 
 The word denoting the direct bribing of a jury 
 (S£K-a{'€6i') is first found about the beginning of the 
 
 1 Arist. Pol. vi. 3. •* Isocr. Anticl. § 160. 
 
 - Dem. Chers. § 69, ° Xenoph. Sympos. § 30 ff. 
 
 2 Isocr. de Pace, § 133. 
 
12 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. i. 
 
 fourth centur)' c.c. ; and though it is not easy to see how 
 juries consisting of five hundred members ormore could 
 be effectively bribed, the fact that they were so is beyond 
 
 ^ dispute. It was part of the general corruption per- 
 vading public life, that disorder with which Greece 
 was "sick even to death." "Envy if a man has 
 taken a bribe, ridicule if he confesses it, pardon if his 
 guilt is proved, and every other appendage of corrup- 
 tion."^ Bribery itself was no new feature in Greek 
 politics ; what was new was that it had become so 
 systematic and was little reprobated. Here was one 
 symptom of the deep disloyalty that was poisoning 
 the sources of Hellenic life. We read of orators who 
 were paid to speak and paid to keep silence ; their 
 
 / business was " to earn their pay, not to express views."- 
 They trafficked in the honours of the state. " Your 
 privileges and rewards are to them so many trumpery 
 wares to be sold by public auction. They give them 
 away at the lowest possible price, and have a fixed 
 charge for which they draw up any form of decree 
 that their numerous employers may require."^ 
 
 Popular morality, however, established a certain 
 distinction in cases of bribery. To take bribes was 
 pronounced to be wrong, but only when they were 
 taken against the interests of the state. This is expli- 
 citly stated by Hypereides."* The distinction may sound 
 to us impudent or unmeaning ; but there have been 
 periods in our own parliamentary history, during the 
 seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when the same 
 idea has prevailed; or, if not the same, the kindred idea, 
 
 / that to give bribes in the interest of the state, in other 
 words, of party, was justifiable. The saying ascribed 
 to Walpole, and which at least expresses the theory 
 
 ' Dcm. Olynth. iii. § 39. 
 - Dcm. (?) Tricianh. Crmvn, § 19. 
 
 ' Dem. Aristocr. § 201 ; cf. Triercirch, Crcnvti, § 22 ; and Isocr. 
 dc Pace, §§121-131. ■• Ilypcrcid. A^t. Dcm. .\xi. 
 
CHAP. I.] THE AGE OF DEMOSTHENES. 13 
 
 on which he acted, that " every man had his price," 
 was in principle almost equivalent to the more cynical 
 avowal of Demades, that " he took money and in- 
 tended to take it."^ Nor must we forget that the 
 Greek orator, who aspired to be a leading statesman, 
 occupied a very peculiar position. It was his duty 
 to be well instructed in the current politics of all the 
 chief cities, to have trustworthy agents abroad, to 
 form friendly ties with foreign potentates, to carry on 
 secret negotiations ; and all this as the unofficial un- 
 salaried adviser of his country, unaided even by grants 
 for secret service money. Further, he was expected 
 to be liberal in his home expenditure and in 
 voluntary donations to the state. Many sums, of 
 which it might not be easy to render public account, 
 passed through his hands and yet left them unsoiled ; 
 and even the receipt of gifts would not always argue 
 want of patriotism. A private fortune was becoming 
 one of the first conditions of political life, and the 
 Athenians were content that their statesmen, like 
 their generals, should look outside the city to enrich 
 themselves, provided that the public interests were 
 not sacrificed. Yet, whatever might be a statesman's 
 honesty of purpose, the imputation of venal motives 
 was a resource too near to hand not to be made the 
 most of by his opponents. Few escaped suspicion 
 save those who, like Phocion, contemptuously shunned 
 contact with affairs, and whose political action was 
 limited to the bare requirements of duty. 
 
 We need not then believe half the charges brought 
 against one another by rival orators ; but that the 
 charges should be so lightly bandied is in itself a vicious 
 sign. Politics which, with the progress of knowledge, 
 had first been elevated into an art, were now degraded 
 into a trade. Demosthenes and Isocrates both con- 
 trast the statesmen of the elder democracy with those 
 ^ Deinarch. Agst. Devi. § 104. 
 
14 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. i. 
 
 of their own day. " Politics were not with them a 
 way of making fortunes." ^ " They regarded govern- 
 ment not as a mercantile speculation but as a public 
 service."^ The change was inevitable in a wealthy 
 democratic society where there was no responsible 
 Ministry. 
 
 The external face of Athens bore evidence of 
 altered relations existing between the individual and 
 the state. The grandeur of private houses and of all 
 that surrounded private life, was in striking contrast 
 with the meanness of the newly erected public 
 buildings. The Greeks were more sensitive than we 
 are to such a contrast Greek art in its best days 
 stood in intimate connection with national life and 
 the religious sentiment In the service of the gods it 
 attached itself to the social activities of man ; it did 
 not gratify vulgar display or set off personal ambitions. 
 Once it had issued from the temples its home was in 
 the thoroughfares of civil life. Till the fourth centun,' 
 B.c, the highest efforts of architecture had been spent 
 on the erection of public buildings. But as private 
 fortunes grew, architecture, an ' after it painting and 
 sculpture, began to minister to private delights and to 
 individual culture. At the beginning of the Periclean 
 age the citizens, from old association, lived chiefly in 
 the country, and wealthy owners prided themselves on 
 their country houses, while their town dwellings were 
 on a much smaller scale.^ Houses and lands, said 
 Pericles, were merely " the garden of the house, the 
 superfluous ornament of wealth, "■* possessions to be 
 lightly resigned in obedience to state interests. Soon, 
 
 1 oi) yitp et'j wepiovfflav (irpdrTeTO avTols rd rlys iro\«ws. — Dcm, 
 0/j'tt//i. iii. § 26. 
 
 3 ov yiip iiiiroplav aWa. \(iTovpy[ay ivoixi^ov tXvai. ttjv riv 
 Koifdv imu^Xeiav. — Isocr. Arcop. § 25. 
 
 * Isocr. Arcof> § 52. 
 
 * Thucyil. ii. 62, I'rof. Jowctl's translation. 
 
CHAP. I.] THE AGE OF DEMOSTHENES. 15 
 
 however, the insecurity of life consequent upon war 
 brought a large population inside the walls, and 
 henceforth, as personal luxury grew, the public and 
 private buildings were seen in painful antithesis. 
 Upon this topic Demosthenes dwells with emphatic 
 repetition.^ " Moreover, former times were times of 
 national prosperity and splendour : no man then stood 
 out above his fellows. The proof of it is this. — Some 
 of you may know the style of house of Themistocles 
 or Miltiades, or of the illustrious men of that day ; you 
 see it is no grander than the mass of houses. On the 
 other hand, the public buildings and edifices were of a 
 magnificence and beauty such that posterity cannot 
 surpass them — the gateway of the Acropolis yonder, 
 the docks, the porticoes, and the other permanent 
 adornments of Athens. To-day your statesmen have 
 vast private fortunes : some of them have built for 
 themselves houses grander than many of the public 
 edifices ; some again have bought up more land than 
 all of you who are in this court together hold. As 
 for the public buildings which you erect and whitewash, 
 I am ashamed to tell ct their meanness and squalor." 
 {Aristocr. §§ 207, 208). 
 
 The festivals were the only national institution 
 which seemed to retain reality. Demosthenes draws 
 a comparison- between the punctual precision with 
 which they were celebrated, and the late and irregular 
 equipment of the armaments \ and the comparison is 
 the more pointed because festivals and armaments 
 alike were provided by the wealthier citizens. In 
 the one case all details were "prearranged and de- 
 finite, nothing was left to chance;" in the other "all 
 was unorganised, unsystematic, and vague " (araKr' 
 
 ■^ Dem. Aristocr. §§ 206-20S ; Olynth. iii. §§ 25, 26 — a passage 
 almost verbally repeated by the imitator who wrote the speech 
 Tfyot o-i^trdlewj (§§ 29, 30) ; cf. also Androt. § 76 ; Timocr. § 184. 
 
 2 Dem. Phil. i. §§ 35, 36. 
 
i6 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. i. 
 
 dSiopdwT uopurd' aTTavra). A special fund called the 
 Theoricon had been long ago set past to enable the 
 citizens to attend the festivals and the theatres. By 
 means of this bounty the great public solemnities 
 were brought within the reach of poor as well as rich. 
 Such an equality of noble enjoyments seemed neces- 
 sary to complete the democratic idea. Grote has 
 shown how the Theoricon had in the first instance 
 a religious aspect ; the public worship of Greece was 
 embodied in the festivals, which included sacred pro- 
 cessions, banquets, dramatic entertainments, and 
 musical contests. The fund thus appropriated ac- 
 quired something of the sanctity of a Church Fund. 
 But by degrees the more serious meaning of the 
 festivals became obscured, and at this time they were 
 little more than a form of public amusement. Since 
 the days of Pericles the sums given away as festival 
 money had been trebled ; the conditions too under 
 which it was bestowed had been altered. The old 
 laws provided that in time of war the surj^lus revenue, 
 after the civil expenditure had been defrayed, should 
 go to the military iund.*- This provision was con- 
 stantly neglected ; the surplus was as a rule carried 
 to the Theoricon in time of war no less than in 
 peace. Before the end of the Peloponnesian war the 
 distribution of festival money had been for the time 
 suspended ; it was revived under the restored demo- 
 cracy. But hitherto the payment of the bounty had 
 been dependent on the existence of a surplus in the 
 revenue. A law of Eubulus, passed in 354 RC, 
 introduced a totally new principle.-' The festival 
 
 ^ [Dem.] AVrttVd, § 4. 
 
 - The traditional statement that Eubulus .attached the penalty 
 of death to any ]^ri>]nisal for applying the Theoricon to war pur- 
 l>oses rests on the late evidence of a Scholiast. The idea was 
 probably basetl on an over-ftleral acceptance of the word airo\iff6ai 
 in Olyttth. iii. § 12. 
 
CHAP. I.] THE AGE OF DEMOSTHENES. 17 
 
 money was now made a first charge on the revenue. 
 The superintendents of the Theoricon were given 
 a permanent control over the entire finances of the 
 state. If the treasury showed no surplus, an adjust- 
 ment must be made elsewhere. Some other branch 
 of the public service had to be starved in order to 
 provide the guaranteed dividend. Like the distribu- 
 tion of cheap corn at Rome, this festival dole was 
 among the most demoralising of all the influences of 
 a corrupt age. It was called by Demades the cement 
 (ko AAa) of the democracy (Plut. Mor. p. ion b); 
 and with still greater aptness it was compared by 
 Aristotle to the sieve of the Danaids (Arist. Pol. 
 vii. 5)- _ 
 
 The Festival Fund stood, as we have seen, in 
 intimate relation with military affairs, and to these we 
 must now turn. We are here met by a fact of capital 
 importance, which shaped the foreign policy of Athens 
 and reacted powerfully on home affairs. With the 
 growth of mercenary armies, which belongs to this , 
 century, the old military organisation broke down. 
 The mercenary system has not been confined to 
 Greece : it has sprung up elsewhere in decadent 
 societies — in Egypt, Carthage, and ancient Rome, as 
 well as in medieval and modern Europe. But no- 
 where was it so disastrous as at Athens, for nowhere 
 else was the life of thought so closely knit with that 
 of vigorous action. 
 
 Owing to long-continued wars military tactics at 
 the opening of the fourth century B.C. had made vast 
 progress : it was found that amateur soldiers could 
 not compete with professionals, and war became a 
 trade. The demand for mercenaries came first from 
 Asia, There the superiority of the trained intelli- 
 gence of the Greek over the barbarian had been 
 long discovered, and pay and plunder were most 
 plentiful in the Persian service. The custom spread 
 c 
 
l8 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. i. 
 
 to the mainland of Greece, and the Corinthian war 
 (394-390 B.C.) marked its beginning. Even Sparta 
 sought the aid of this venal courage. The armies 
 of Greece, like those of Asia, were recruited " from 
 men without cities, from deserters, and from the dregs 
 of the criminal classes,"^ who enhsted under the 
 highest bidder. "The bodies of the Hellenes," says 
 Lysias, "belong to those who can pay." We have 
 many pictures of the terrible excesses practised by 
 these Greeks, "who were barbarians in all save 
 speech."^ "Common enemies of mankind" is the 
 title given them by Isocrates, ^ and Demosthenes uses 
 almost identical language.'* But ruinous as they were 
 to the countries over which they moved, and especially 
 to the seaboard of Asia, Greece herself was in the 
 end the worst sufferer. Of those who thus took service 
 abroad the greater number never came home. The 
 drain upon the population went on in increasing 
 volume. At Issus 40,000 Greek mercenaries fought 
 for Darius. Finally, Greece perished, says Polybius, 
 for want of men. 
 
 If we turn to Athens we can trace the working of 
 the change under a double aspect First, the citizen 
 ^ was no longer a soldier. Legally, indeed, he still 
 continued such ; for in the ancient republics the ques- 
 tion of compulsory militar)' service was not raised. 
 From primitive times, when the peo])le was tlie army, 
 the identity between soldier and citizen had been 
 tacitly assumed and laid down by law. Ever)- young 
 man between the age of eighteen and twenty had still 
 to go through a period of short service on the frontier 
 preparatory to admission into the regular army. But 
 here it generally ended. No further militar)' duty was 
 enforced, and foreign service was in the main left to 
 4/ mercenaries. This was not due merely to the desire 
 
 J Isocr. de Pace, § 44. » De Pace, % 46. 
 
 * Isocr. E/i. ix. 9 8. * Aristocr. § 39. 
 
CHAP. I.] THE AGE OF DEMOSTHENES. 19 
 
 for repose after an exhausting struggle, or to the exi- 
 gencies of professional warfare. It was one of the many 
 symptoms of the decay of civic loyalty. The citizen^/ 
 ceased to be a soldier when he ceased to be a politician. 
 As the internal government was handed over to a 
 small knot of orators, so the defence of Athens abroad 
 was left to mercenaries. The evil at first appeared 
 under a mitigated form. Chabrias, Iphicrates, and 
 Timotheus tempered the mercenary element by a 
 large admixture of citizen troops. Under Chares 
 and Charidemus the new system was in full develop- 
 ment. 
 
 The case of the fleet differed somewhat from that 
 of the army. In the time of Pericles foreigners had 
 been often employed to man the fleet, but the com- 
 mander of a vessel and the soldiers on board were 
 citizens. Isocrates says that in his day this practice 
 was inverted. The needy citizens were forced to row, 
 while foreigners served as hoplites. Thus when a 
 descent was made on an enemy's coast, the alien 
 went ashore under arms, the citizen with a cushion.^ 
 
 No attempt was made to regulate the abuse by 
 forming a permanent war fund. The question was a 
 delicate one, whose discussion was avoided. The 
 surplus revenue was passed to the Theoricon ; and 
 even before the law of Eubulus (p. 16) had been 
 carried, it would have been bold to venture on 
 questioning the arrangement. The inconsistency of 
 carrying on wars with an impoverished treasury, and 
 at the same time of distributing the yearly bonus, was 
 not honestly faced. The mercenaries had to remu- 
 nerate themselves as best they could. 
 
 When the citizen ceased to be a soldier, the s/ 
 statesman ceased to be a general. Pallas, guardian 
 of Athens, had the double title of goddess of war and 
 
 ^ Isocr. de Pace, § 48. 
 
20 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. i. 
 
 of civil life ; ^ and the old Homeric ideal of the man 
 who is great in speech and great in action lingered 
 on to the days of Miltiades and Themistocles. Even 
 Pericles united in himself the twofold character, but 
 in him the statesman predominates over the general. 
 With Cleon the new era was ushered in, and by the 
 time of Demosthenes the separation of functions is 
 pretty fully recognised.- Phocion is noted by Plu- 
 tarch as the last who resolved to resort to the elder 
 tradition.^ This divorce between political and 
 military leadership was the natural outcome of 
 specialised training. The arts of eloquence and of 
 war had been highly cultivated, and a division of 
 labour became not only necessary but desirable. 
 But the change had also a darker side. The pro- 
 fessional general was required to lead the professional 
 soldier. This new type of soldier differed little from 
 a freebooter ; his leader was almost forced to become 
 a banditti chief Athenian generals found themselves 
 obliged to conform to the temper of foreign mercen- 
 aries, to pay whom was the primary recjuisite. 
 Regular pay was not supplied from home, and an 
 idea was now current that war should be self-support- 
 ing. To the upright Timotheus this ma.xim meant 
 that the plunder taken from the enemy should serve 
 as a bounty for the soldiers. A Chares or a Chari- 
 demus so interpreted it as to raise indiscriminate 
 levies upon enemies and allies alike. These exactions 
 from the allies, as \vc learn from Demosthenes, went 
 by the euphemism of " benevolences " {evioiai) * — a 
 phrase which has curious parallels both in English 
 and German history — and were the chief cause which 
 brought on the fatal revolt of the allies. Vet pay 
 must come from somewhere. " Can it come from 
 
 ' iroXf/tiKrj Kal 7ro\tr«\-fj. Plutarch, Phocion, ch. vii. 
 
 - See the complaint of Isocr. de Face, § 54. 
 
 ' Phocion, ch. vii. * Chcrs. %% 24- 2S. 
 
CHAP. I.] THE AGE OF DEMOSTHENES. 21 
 
 the skies ? " says Demosthenes. " No ! the general 
 must go on with what he scrapes together, begs and 
 borrows."^ A commander in such a position had 
 obviously to humour his men to the utmost, to stimu- 
 late the greed of gain and the love of pleasure, to 
 give them the opportunity of squandering what they 
 had, that they might be incited to win more. The 
 nature of the case forbade him to pursue any large or 
 even definite plan of operations ; he must live on from 
 hand to mouth, adopting such means as he could to 
 prevent his troops from being tempted away by higher 
 offers. A method of deferred pay was devised by 
 Iphicrates to ensure this end. It is needless to say 
 how greatly the treacherous courage, which could thus 
 be bought, differed from the sustained and disciphned 
 fortitude of a citizen army. 
 
 The abuses in the navy were precisely similar in 
 kind. Two speeches, which are of the age if not from 
 the pen of Demosthenes, give us a valuable insight 
 into this department — the speeches Agahist Polycles 
 (l.), and On the Trierarchic Crown ^ (li.) The 
 Trierarchy was an extraordinary public service de- 
 volving on the wealthiest citizens. At the period to 
 which both these speeches apparently belong (before 
 357 B.C.), the office was divided between two trier- 
 archs (o-wt pi-qpapyoi)^ whose legal duty was to main- 
 tain and keep in repair a vessel which was provided 
 and equipped by the state. The office lasted for a 
 year, at the end of which time the trierarch in com- 
 mand was bound to hand over the ship in good con- 
 
 ^ Chers. § 26. 
 
 ^ Blass argues forcibly for The Tiierarchic Crown being the 
 work of Demosthenes. If so, it is his earliest speech on a ques- 
 tion that touched politics (its date being between 361 B.C. and 
 357 B.C.), and has therefore a peculiar interest. Kirchoff's pam- 
 phlet on this speech (Berlin, 1865) is an excellent enquiry into 
 certain points connected with the Trierarchy. 
 
22 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. i. 
 
 dition to a successor. The vessel was generally 
 insufficiently manned at the outset ; and if extra 
 oarsmen (lavrai) were needed, or skilled hands 
 (uTTT/pcTai, iTijpea-ia) employed on board, they had to 
 be paid out of the trierarch's pocket. In the speech 
 Against Polycles (359 B.c. or 358 B.C.), we read that 
 Apollodorus, who exceeded the legal requirements in 
 undertaking the office without a colleague, and in 
 equipping a ship at his own expense, had his .'term of 
 service extended by five months, owing to a defaulting 
 successor, and ultimately received pay for only eight 
 months out of the seventeen. Even the daily rations 
 provided were insufficient Many of his crew, who 
 were picked men, deserted, seduced by high pay and 
 large bounties. They saw that " my resources were 
 exhausted, that the state was negligent, the allies im- 
 poverished, the generals untrustworthy " (§§ 14, 15). 
 The speech On the Trierarchic Crown reveals another 
 weakness in the organisation of the fleet A custom 
 had grown up by which the trierarch contracted with 
 a deputy, who undertook the office as a speculation. 
 The terror of this marauding deputy -trierarch was 
 such that the Athenians, says the speaker (§ 13), were 
 the only people who were " unable to travel any- 
 where without a herald's staff," as a pledge of peace- 
 ful intentions. 
 
 The evils of the militarj' system were great when 
 the general was an Athenian, and responsible to the 
 peojjle ; they were aggravated when the general, as 
 well as the soldiers, was a foreigner, and like them 
 free from civic scruples. In all cases there was the 
 same tendency to become independent of the state, 
 and to form treasonable connexions abroad. Thus, 
 Iphicrates became son-in-law of the Thracian Cotys, 
 and served him against Athens, Charidemus allied 
 himself with Cersobleptcs, and Chares with Artobazus. 
 Yet such men, some of them mere pirates, became 
 
CHAP. I.] TPIE AGE OF DEMOSTHENES. 23 
 
 heroes for the time ; and Demosthenes observes that 
 victories were now ascribed to the general, and not to 
 the nation. " No one would think of attributing the 
 victory of Salamis to Themistocles, instead of to 
 Athens, or the battle of Marathon to INIiltiades instead 
 of to the country. But now it is often said Timotheus 
 took Corcyra, and Iphicrates cut to pieces the Spartan 
 division, and Chabrias won the battle of Naxos. You 
 seem, Athenians, to waive your claim to these achieve- 
 ments by the extravagant distinctions with which you 
 have rewarded each of these generals. "■'■ 
 
 While success was lavishly rewarded, defeat was 
 visited with the like severity. Even Timotheus was 
 made to suffer for results, the causes of which were in- 
 herent in a vicious system. The relations thus created 
 between the military and civil leaders were uniquely 
 mischievous. The people took their estimate of the 
 generals from the lipj oi the orai.ors,"' whose favour was 
 therefore studiously sought. Chares spent on this 
 object some of the contributions of the allies,^ and 
 Charidemus seems to have kept paid agents at home 
 to propose honorary votes in his favour.'^ Alliances 
 so insecure needed little to convert them into enmities. 
 The people, quick to suspect guilt when there was 
 failure, looked to the orators to give effect to their 
 displeasure. Accusption might be made a profitable 
 task. The document which is known as Failip's 
 Letter (340 B.C.), now generally supposed to be 
 genuine, hits the truth with singular exactness. He 
 points out how it was the interest of the orators, as 
 distinct from that of the people, to maintain war, and 
 proceeds thus : " I am told by persons well acquainted 
 with your government that to them peace is war, and 
 
 ^ Dem. Aristocr. §§ 198 ff. 
 
 2 Dem. Aristocr. § 147 ; cf. Trierarch. Crown, §§ 16-21. 
 
 ^ Theopompus ap. At/ten. xii. 43. 
 
 ■* Dem. Aristocr. §§ 185-6. 
 
/ 
 
 24 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. i. 
 
 war is peace ; for they always get something from the 
 generals either as their tools or their accusers " (§ 1 9). 
 Thus the division of labour between the civil and 
 military authorities was ready to expand into an open 
 breach. 
 
 From what has been said it will be seen that a 
 financial problem was in the age of Demosthenes 
 that which perhaps most pressed for a practical 
 answer. The main source of revenue was dried up, 
 since the tribute of the allies had ceased to flow in ; 
 and Athens had to fight for her existence at a moment 
 when she was most impoverished, and when pro- 
 fessional armies had made war more than ever costly. 
 The people still insisted on the budget showing a. sur- 
 plus to be devoted to their amusements ; and even 
 had it been otherwise, the existing revenue could 
 hardly have sufficed to keep up a war establishment 
 In days before the institution of a national debt, two 
 methods only of meeting extraordinary expenditure 
 had occurred to the Athenians. One was a direct 
 tax (eicr</)o/)u) upon the property of all citizens except 
 the poorest — a tax which was regarded with ever-in- 
 creasing aversion — the other was the imposition of a 
 special service upon the wealthy classes, and an appeal 
 to their patriotism to come to the relief of the state. 
 The latter expedient was that which the people most 
 favoured, and on which they mainly depended. Even 
 in 402 B.C. Lysias had said that the surest revenue of 
 the state was the property of the wealthy.^ But such a 
 system created bitter class jealousies, and at the same 
 time was ineffective. The rich, already harassed in 
 divers ways by the democracy, found ways of cvadin, 
 the burden. Various attempts at reform were mad^, 
 but the balance had been merely altered and r.ot 
 righted, till the Trierarchic Law of Demosthenes (j -, 
 B.C.) satisfied conflicting claims. But in truth the 
 ^ Lysias, Or. .\xi. §113. 
 
CHAP. I.] THE AGE OF DEMOSTHENES. 25 
 
 demands on patriotism had been overstrained at 
 Athens ; what in its nature could only be exceptional 
 was expected to be normal ; the state looked for a 
 sustained and high-WTOught spirit of self-sacrifice, in 
 times when the individual was daily drifting away from 
 the current of civic life. 
 
 The attitude of thinking men towards politics had 
 in it no healing influence. Between philosophy and 
 Greek life there had always existed a latent antagonism, 
 though in the Periclean age the signs of the future 
 schism were as yet few. Long ago the philosophers 
 had attacked the polytheistic religion — one of the two 
 principles on which Greek society was based ; by 
 degrees it pronounced also against the other principle, 
 that of the City itself. It is recorded of Anaxagoras 
 that when some one saidiio him, " You don't care for 
 your country," he answered, "I care greatly for my 
 country," and pointed to the heaven.^ Similarly Soc- 
 rates, when asked ironically "What is your country?" 
 replied, " My country is the world. "^ The story about 
 Socrates, whether true or false, shows the spirit of the 
 Socratic school, whose nascent instincts of cosmopo- 
 litanism were hampered by the narrow limits of the 
 city. The sight too of politics degraded into faction, 
 and of a public morality which sanctioned what private 
 morality condemned, was repugnant to thinkers for 
 whom individual virtue was of the highest moment. 
 The proved impotence of all known governments, and 
 of democracy in particular, to restrain excess and foster 
 habits of virtue, created in the noblest spirits a pro- 
 found despair. We catch its tones in the well-known 
 ; assage of Plato, describing the man who, reflecting 
 u'lon the evil times on which he had fallen, " holds 
 ii;- peace and does his own business;" "who is like 
 
 ^ ■ 'log. Laert. ii. 7. 
 
 ■^ Plutarch de Exsilio, ch. 5 ; Cic. Tusc. v. 37. There is a 
 play on the double meaning of the word Koafj-ios. 
 
26 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. i. 
 
 one who retires under the shelter of a wall in the storm 
 of dust and sleet which the driving wind hurries along ; 
 and when he sees the rest of mankind full of wicked- 
 ness, he is content if only he can live his own life and 
 be pure from evil or unrighteousness, and depart in 
 peace and good will with bright hopes. " ^ 
 
 Philosophy did not, however, openly assail existing 
 systems, or attempt to head a popular and revolutionary 
 movement. It stood aside in aristocratic seclusion, 
 slowly moulding an educated opinion whose centre 
 was in Athens, but whose branches were throughout 
 Greece. The newly awakened desires for larger 
 unions were turning dimly towards monarchy. As 
 the world was not yet prepared to make the philosopher 
 a king, the next best thing was to turn the king into 
 a philosopher. Panegyrics on monarchy were written 
 by students, and that which was at first a vague aspi- 
 ration was becoming an idea that might touch practical 
 politics. Some, like Isocrates, sought for a ruler of 
 Greek blood who should bind together the Hellenes 
 in some great military enterprise. Others thought of 
 more peaceful triumphs. Any hope, indeed, with 
 which Plato may have looked to Syracuse was rudely 
 disappointed by the younger Dionysius ; Plato's 
 followers, however, entered into close alliance with 
 the Macedonian court, which had for many years 
 given a welcome to Greek philosophers. The new 
 intellectual intercourse which now sprang up between 
 Athens and Macedon was one fresh solvent introduced 
 into civic life, and must have helped to bring about 
 that final divorce between thought and action which 
 indicated the ruin of free Greece. 
 
 ^ Plato, Kc-f>. B. vi. p. 496 ; Prof. Jowett's translation. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 HIS PUBLIC LIFE AND SPEECHES. EARLY PERIOD. 
 
 Demosthenes was born probably in the year 484 
 B.C. Like many eminent Athenians he came of a 
 mixed marriage. His father was a well-to-do manu- 
 facturer of the deme Paeania, who had two establish- 
 ments, one for cutlery, the other for upholstery. On 
 his mother's side he had foreign blood in his veins. 
 She was the daughter of Gylon, an Athenian citizen 
 who had settled in the Crimea, and taken a wife from 
 that region. Hence the reproach afterwards levelled 
 against Demosthenes that he was a barbarian and a 
 Scythian. He was seven years old when his father 
 died leaving property estimated at fourteen talents 
 (about ;^34oo), in those days a very respectable 
 fortune. His guardians were Aphobus and Demophon, 
 nephews of his father, and Therippides, a friend of the 
 family. During a minority of ten years the property 
 might well have doubled in value, but between fraud 
 and mismanagement on the part of the guardians, little 
 more than one-tenth of the capital bequeathed was 
 handed over to Demosthenes when he came of age. 
 Of his early years we know but little ; he seems to 
 have passed a joyless and companionless boyhood. 
 A delicate and sickly child, with a studious bent of 
 mind, he took no part in the ordinary athletic train- 
 ing of a Greek ; he lived at home with his mother 
 
28 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. ii. 
 
 and a younger sister. With his sensitive nature and 
 precocious intelligence he must soon have become 
 aware that things were going amiss. Gradually the 
 resolve to redress the wrongs of his house took definite 
 shape in his mind, and henceforth, doubtless, he was 
 an eager listener in the law courts. Tradition records 
 the deep impression made on him by the orator 
 Callistratus pleading for his life ; and the wonder 
 with which he observed the sovereign influence of 
 speech. To carry out his purpose he had to acquire 
 a knowledge of law and some rhetorical skill. The 
 teacher he applied to was Isaeus, the well-known 
 speech-writer, and a great icgai authority, especially 
 in cases of inheritance. Demosthenes was now 
 eighteen years old. The three or four years he 
 spent under Isaeus were a time of bracing disciple- 
 ship, a period whose ripe results were seen in the 
 comprehensive knowledge of law, and the grasp of 
 legal principles, hereafter characteristic of Demos- 
 thenes, and in a faculty of rigorous reasoning at close 
 quarters in which the pupil surpassed the master. 
 
 At the age of twenty he commenced the suit against 
 his guardians, in an action against Aphobus (363 b.c), 
 in which he pleaded his own case. The full sum claimed 
 was awarded him, but payment was as far oft" as ever. 
 Under the Athenian law of debt it was not easy for a 
 creditor to enforce his rights. Aphobus, who had 
 already refused to abide by an arbitrator's decision, 
 and had othenvise shown himself an adept at artifice, 
 resolved to defeat the judgment of the court. He 
 succeeded in delaying the issue by creating out of the 
 present trial two fresh suits. The more important of 
 these was that of Demosthenes against Onetor, the 
 wealthy brother-in-law of Aphobus. A pretended 
 mortgage had been made to him of a farm belonging 
 to Aphobus, as a means of preventing Demosthenes 
 from seizing the farm in execution of the judgment. 
 
CHAP. II.] PUBLIC LIFE AND SPEECHES. 29 
 
 The amount finally recovered by Demosthenes is 
 not known ; it can have been but a remnant of his 
 patrimony, enough to secure him a competence and 
 no more. 
 
 The speeches Against Aphobus, and Against 
 Onetor, show the marked influence of Isaeus, not 
 only in certain borrowed commonplaces and similar 
 turns of expression, but in their general spirit and 
 structure. It may well be that Isaeus aided in their 
 composition, but we cannot infer, with some ancient 
 critics, that the speeches were written by him. The 
 features in which they recall Isaeus are for the most 
 part features common to Isaeus and Demosthenes ; 
 — lucid reasoning, cogent and elaborate proof, narra- 
 tive and proof interwoven, more emotional warmth, a 
 more rapid and nervous phrase, than is commonly 
 found in the earlier forensic oratory. More distinct- 
 ively Demosthenic are the recapitulations, the frequent 
 use of the dilemma, the persuasive earnestness of tone. 
 The perorations claim special notice. The two 
 speeches Against Onetor end in a peculiarly Isaean 
 manner, — in an argument powerfully thrust home. 
 In the two speeches Against Aphobus the deep indig- 
 nation of the young man kindles him into a final 
 appeal more pathetic than Attic usage sanctioned. 
 
 These years of painful effort were a fit training for 
 the struggle of after life. It is true they may have 
 helped to make Demosthenes an ungenial person, to 
 turn seriousness into sourness, a reserved into a 
 morose temper. But without the absorbing passion 
 that occupied his boyhood, and the obstacles that he 
 had to encounter single-handed, we should perhaps 
 never have had the gi-eat qualities that marked the 
 mature man. In the tenacity of purpose, the self-con- 
 centrated energy with which he pursued his end, there 
 was the promise of future greatness. 
 
 " You have not yet," says Demosthenes, at the end 
 
30 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. ii. 
 
 of his second speech against Aphobus, " proved me, 
 and you cannot know what service I may do you : 
 but at least you may hope that I shall not be a worse 
 man than my father." Already, perhaps, the young 
 man had some stirrings of ambition ; by the time the 
 suit against his guardians was over he was certainly 
 becoming conscious of his powers. But he had many 
 natural defects to remedy. His articulation was 
 defective, his manner clumsy, his voice weak and ill- 
 managed. On his first appearance in the assembly 
 he sat down amid laughter and uproar. With indo- 
 mitable patience he strove to subdue his rebellious 
 organs. Demetrius of Phalerum heard from his own 
 lips how with pebbles in his mouth he had recited 
 verses, how he had declaimed while running, or as he 
 walked up hill, and how he had practised his gestures 
 in front of a mirror. Other more sensational exercises 
 are not so well attested. He also had recourse to 
 the lessons of actors, and formed himself on their 
 model. The grave dignity of the Periclean oratory 
 had given way to a more dramatic and impassioned 
 manner. Demosthenes conformed himself to the 
 prevailing taste, but fastidious critics always found 
 something overdone in his delivery. His early diffi- 
 culties left some permanent trace. He never seems 
 to have attained perfect certainty and self-control in 
 extempore speech, and for this, among other reasons, 
 he seldom rose, even in answer to a clamorous 
 demand, save after careful premedituiioi^ Vet rare 
 occasions are recorded on which his improvised 
 eloquence achieved signal success. 
 
 His first regular work was speech-writing for the 
 law courts — at Athens a frequent stepping-stone to 
 ])ublic life, as was the profession of an advocate at 
 Rome. Even in later years, and at the height of his 
 political activity, he never wholly gave up this work. 
 Most, however, of the speeches he wrote for others 
 
CHAP. II.] PUBLIC LIFE AND SPEECHES. 31 
 
 belong to the years 362-354 b.c For seven years 
 after his own lawsuit it does not appear that he again 
 spoke in court. He was slowly perfecting himself 
 in private. His spare hours he spent in practice 
 with the pen, in the study of law and of Athenian 
 history, and in mastering the practical politics of the 
 day, especially questions concerning the v.aw and 
 finance. After hearing a speech he would come 
 home and resume its main outlines by himself, and 
 even recall its periods. Passing events and law cases 
 afforded him matter for solitary discussion ; in his 
 own chamber he recounted the facts and argued 
 doubtful points. 
 
 His earliest court speeches were in private (or, as we 
 should say, in civil) cases. But by degrees his forensic, 
 labours brought him into contact with public life. 
 The Athenian law courts stood in a peculiar relation 
 to the legislature. The responsibility for a measure 
 rested during a year, not with the body that passed it, but 
 with the author of the measure. Within that time he 
 might be indicted for an " unconstitutional proposal " 
 (ypa(j)i] rrapav6fx(j}v), that is, for proposing a measure 
 inconsistent with existing laws. The tribunal had in 
 each case to determine the vague phrase " unconstitu- 
 tional." IMany questions of party politics were thus 
 fought out in the law courts. The forensic speeches 
 of Demosthenes in these public causes must be taken 
 as an exposition of his general policy. Even when 
 he is writing for others, himself remaining hidden 
 behind the scenes, the voice is still that of Demos- 
 thenes. His strong personality, his sincerity of con- 
 viction, breaks through dramatic disguises. The 
 speeches composed for political trials from 355 
 to 352 B.C. — Agaiftst And/vtion, Agaitist Leptities, 
 Against Twiocrates, Against Aristocrates — all exhibit 
 the formed purpose of a statesman. They may be 
 read as the prelude to his political career. Already 
 
32 DEMOSTHENES. [chaf. ii. 
 
 he had set himself the task of his life — to assert for 
 Athens her proper place in the Greek world, to reform 
 domestic abuses, to rouse again the civic spirit, which 
 appeared to him to be slumbering, not dead. 
 
 The speech Against Androtion (355 b.c), 
 written for Uiodorus, is a blow aimed by Demosthenes 
 against the existing administration. Androtion had 
 proposed that the outgoing Council should receive, as 
 usual, a golden crown. Diodorus and Euctemon 
 jointly attacked the measure as illegal. Euctemon had 
 spoken first. The main issues are supposed to have 
 been already dealt with, and the second speaker 
 assumes the right to a freer handling. Of the legal 
 arguments against the proposal, the first, which is 
 technical, is passed over lightly. The second is more 
 seriously urged, that there was a law prohibiting the 
 bestowal of the crown in cases where the Council in 
 its year of office had not added new ships to the navy. 
 Demosthenes appeals, as his manner is, to history to 
 show that the state of the navy had a decisive influ- 
 ence for good or evil on Athenian affairs. As a 
 further objection to the proposal it is argued that 
 An(^rotion, being a man of infamous character and a 
 state debtor, was disc|ualified from speaking in the 
 assembly. These personal imputations, which would 
 have been relevant only if backed up by legal decisions, 
 lead up to an account of Androtion's public adminis- 
 tration. An indignant force animates this ])art of the 
 speech, and reveals the true voice of Demosthenes 
 behind that of the speaker. The special charge, 
 which is narrow and in part technical, broadens out 
 into an attack upon a mischievous system. Demos- 
 thenes, it is clear, has ]nit his heart into the case. 
 He inveighs against Androtion as one of a corrupt 
 school, whose financial policy was showy and unsound, 
 and who imagined that they might override the laws 
 at their will and pleasure. The argumentative subtle- 
 
CKAP. II.] PUBLIC LIFE AND SPEECHES. 33 
 
 ties with which the speech abounds rest upon the 
 thought that- constitutional forms must be jealously 
 guarded. The concluding passage (§§ 69-78) resembles 
 in tone the great political speeches that are to come. 
 Demosthenes has already formed his own conception, 
 hereafter to be enlarged but not essentially altered, ot 
 what the spirit of Athens truly is. That spirit Andro- 
 tion has misread. He did not see that " this people 
 has never striven to acquire riches, but always to win 
 renown. Once the wealthiest of the states of Greece, 
 it spent all in the cause of honour. Hence it has won 
 treasure imperishable, alike in the memory of noble 
 deeds and in the splendour of the monuments which 
 enshrine them (§ 76). The mingled irony and 
 indignation with which the speech ends are strikingly 
 unlike the ordinary calm of the Attic peroration. 
 
 The verdict was given in favour of Androtion. 
 
 The speech Against Leptines marks the first 
 occasion on which Demosthenes appeared in court 
 on a political question. Leptines had carried a law 
 withdrawing the hereditary immunities which had 
 been bestowed on public benefactors, and attaching 
 a penal prohibition to the proposal of similar immu- 
 nities for the future. The descendants of Harmodius 
 and Aristogiton were alone exempted. A year had 
 expired since the law had been passed. The author 
 of it was therefore no longer personally responsible, 
 but the law itself might still be arraigned as uncon- 
 stitutional.^ Those whom Demosthenes supported 
 in this trial proposed in its stead a law which should 
 regulate but not abolish such honorary grants. There 
 were, however, plausible arguments on the other side. 
 The moment was one of financial embarrassment at 
 the end of the Social War ; the measure of Leptines, 
 
 ^ Hence the title of this speech, tt/jos AeTrnVTjr, not /card 
 AeTrrivov, 
 
34 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. ii. 
 
 removing privilege and equalising burdens, vas in 
 apparent harmony with democratic principles ; and 
 cases existed where the disproportion between reward 
 and merit was conspicuous. The measure too was 
 popular, for it secured the people in their amuse- 
 fnents, the exemptions in question being exemptions 
 only from the " ordinar)' liturgies," that is from those 
 state burdens which were connected with the festivals. 
 The speech of Demosthenes subjects the measure to 
 a detailed but comprehensive treatment. Various 
 threads of argument are interwoven. He contends 
 that the law is dishonourable, impolitic, unjust, and 
 unconstitutional. But there are no symmetrical divi- 
 sions corresi)onding to these several lines of thought 
 He sometimes combines the points of view, some- 
 times passes by easy transitions from one to the 
 other. The presiding thought is that the law is a 
 violation of public faith. It is inconsistent with 
 the spirit of Athens. Athens had always valued 
 a good name above riches. Commercial morality 
 was protected by strict legislation : was the national 
 credit to be more lightly esteemed ? So nice and 
 jealous had been the honour of the Athenians 
 that they had paid debts contracted in their name 
 even by usurpers such as the Thirty Tyrants. The 
 saving effected by this law was after all slight ; but 
 were it far greater, it would be too dearly pur- 
 chased. Such a jiarsimony was not economy. If 
 the state was impoverished, all the more ought they 
 to guard their credit, the one treasure that was their 
 own. " You must beware," says Demosthenes, " not 
 to be found guilty as a nation of acts from which 
 you would shrink as individuals" (§ 136). They 
 might be tempted in the name of religion to re- 
 pudiate their promises. The festivals, it might be 
 said, are religious sen-ices, obligatory upon all. But 
 the pretext of religion could not justify a dishonesty 
 
CHAP. II.] PUBLIC LIFE AND SPEECHES. 35 
 
 which human morality condemned. Besides, nothing 
 was so abhorrent to Athens as meanness or pettiness 
 of soul. Let her retain her large generosity, and 
 still hold forth high inducements to patriotism : who 
 could say when she might again need a liberator, and 
 wish to recompense him.'* At the end of the speech 
 Demosthenes employs an illustration which tradition 
 had ascribed to Solon, and which the orator himself 
 works out more fully elsewhere {Timocr. §212): "Those 
 who debase the coinage you punish with death : 
 strange indeed will it be if you give ear to those who 
 debase the whole commonwealth and render it un- 
 trustworthy" (§ 167). Such are briefly the great 
 principles which Demosthenes conceived to be at 
 stake. " My main point," he says, " is not the 
 question of the immunity. I maintain that the law 
 introduces a vicious practice, the result of which will 
 be to create a distrust of all the grants conferred by 
 the people" (§ 124). The speech must be read in 
 order to appreciate the variety of argument which he 
 brings to bear upon this central idea. The style is 
 that of calm reasoning. It never quite rises into the 
 language of passion, but a moral elevation of view 
 does the persuasive work of passion. This and a 
 certain subtle delicacy of expression are the two 
 features of the speech which most impressed the 
 ancients. 
 
 On turning to this speech after The Androtion we 
 recognise here a new feature — a quiet self-mastery and 
 studied moderation. There is no invective ; at most 
 there are touches of courteous irony. In general it 
 may be observed of the early speeches of Demos- 
 thenes, that those which he delivered himself, whether 
 forensic or deliberative, differ from the forensic speeches 
 which he composed for others. The former are on 
 the whole guarded and temperate, the latter are 
 more abrupt, impassioned, and personal. It may 
 
36 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. ir. 
 
 be that he grew warm and even violent as he put his 
 thoughts on paper ; that as a speech-writer for others 
 he yielded to this tendency; but that in his first 
 public appearances he resolved not recklessly to 
 prejudice his career by making personal enemies. 
 
 In the same year (354 B.c),at the age of thirty, he 
 came forward and spoke in the Assembly. Tradition 
 tells us of previous attempts which were failures, but 
 the speech On the Symmories or Navy Boards 
 is the first political harangue of which we have a 
 record. The speech had a double motive. The 
 question under immediate discussion was war with 
 Persia. Demosthenes connects it with a measure for 
 the reform of the Navy, whence the speech derives 
 its title. Rumours were afloat of an intended inva- 
 sion of Greece by Artaxerxes Ochus, King of Persia, 
 and a burst of warlike patriotism was awakened. 
 The Athenians had recently aided a revolted Satrap, 
 and were quick to detect a coming vengeance. The 
 Persian preparations were in truth directed against 
 rebellious subjects ; but at Athens there were some 
 who told of the vast armament already on its way, of 
 the 1200 camels laden with gold which the king was 
 bringing ; how he would raise a large army of Greek 
 mercenaries, and how the faithless Thebans would 
 again join him as of old. Demosthenes had to cool 
 the misdirected ardour of his countrymen, and he 
 seized the moment to lay down some broad lines of 
 foreign policy. He saw, as is evident from various 
 indications in the speech, that Persia was no longer 
 a serious menace to Greece. But while restoring 
 public confidence, he does not seek to remove all 
 apprehension tor the future. Fear was preferable to 
 apathy, and was capable of being turned into a 
 healthy stimulant. The Greeks, he pointed out, 
 might combine for a defensive war ; they could not, 
 and ought not, for a war of aggression. Their fear 
 
CHAP. II.] PUBLIC LIFE AiS'D SPEECHES. 37 
 
 of Persia was for the time neutralised by mutual 
 hatred. " Your ambassadors will simply go on a 
 rhapsodising mission from town to town " (§ i 2). To 
 force the states into a premature union would be to 
 drive the weaker among them into the arms of Persia. 
 Athens was the guardian of Panhellenic interests, 
 and had exceptional obligations. " Many of the other 
 Greek states may prosecute private interests of their 
 own to the neglect of Greece at large : for you it 
 would be dishonourable even to take vengeance for 
 your wrongs in such a way as to bring the wrong- 
 doers under the barbarian yoke " (§ 6). Danger was 
 not now imminent. Their immediate need was to 
 husband their resources, and take precautionary 
 measures against the evil day. This leads him to his 
 practical proposal, which he introduces with a charac- 
 teristic preface. " The head and front of your 
 preparation consists in a frame of mind such that 
 each man among you shall be willing and eager to do 
 his duty. Whenever you have been united in your 
 aims, and each individual has regarded the task of 
 execution as devolving upon himself, nothing has ever 
 slipped from your grasp. On the other hand, when- 
 ever you have formed a determination, and then 
 looked at one another, each expecting his neigh- 
 bour to act while he was to remain idle, everything 
 has failed you" (§§ 14, 15). The key-note of the 
 Philippics is here struck. He proceeds to explain his 
 scheme of navy reform. The scheme has, as he 
 himself says, been laboriously thought out, and it is 
 precise in every detail. It is based on the existing 
 organisation of the Sy?iwwries, and aims at ensuring 
 the better despatch of armaments by bringing the 
 departments of the navy into a closer and better 
 defined relation to one another. For this purpose 
 the larger boards are broken into smaller groups ; to 
 each group is assigned a corresponding division of 
 
38 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. ii. 
 
 the fleet, and its proper share of the funds. Definite 
 duties are substituted for vague and diff'used respon- 
 sibility. He did not now ask them to raise money ; 
 the money would be forthcoming when the danger 
 was more real (§§ 16-23). The orator then returns 
 to the main topic, and reinforces his previous argu- 
 ments. We may refer in passing to his sentiment 
 about Thebes, which is far removed from narrow 
 prejudice : " I know it is difficult to say anything to 
 you about that people. You hate them so that you 
 would not like to hear anything to their credit, even 
 if it were true." He then declares his belief that 
 " so far from them ever being likely to join the 
 Persian king in an invasion of Greece, they would 
 give vast sums, if they could, to atone for their past 
 offences against her" (§ 33). The substance of his 
 advice is resumed thus : " Do not then expose the 
 maladies of the Greek world by convoking its members 
 when they will not listen to you, and going to war 
 when you will be unable to carry it on. Rather keep 
 quiet, maintain your courage, and make preparations " 
 
 (§ 38). 
 
 No previous speaker had urged this course of 
 action, and throughout the debate Demosthenes was 
 almost unsupported. The invasion of Persia by a 
 united Greece had long been a popular theme for rhe- 
 toricians and declaimers. It had a special charm for 
 a people who lived, as the Athenians did, almost 
 wholly on the memories of the past. Isocrates had, 
 two years before, urged the plan with an almost 
 pathetic earnestness as the only cure for their mani- 
 fold ills. And now it seemed to meet the crisis and 
 to fall in with the temper of the people. Demos- 
 thenes, with that sense of the possible which is 
 one of the first requisites of statesmanship, marked 
 firmly the limits within which such an idea was appli- 
 cable. And the people, in answer to this convincing 
 
CHAP. II.] PUBLIC LIFE AND SPEECHES. 39 
 
 wisdom, gave up a futile enterprise. The positive 
 side of the orator's counsel did not meet with equal 
 favour. No alteration was made in the navy till 
 sixteen years later, when he himself carried a more 
 simple and thorough reform. 
 
 This speech is a remarkable instance of Demos- 
 thenes' earlier manner. A long study of Thucydides, 
 whose influence can hardly be traced in the court 
 speeches of the same period, has here left its manifest 
 mark. The style may perhaps in part be explained 
 by the scrupulous premeditation of a young man 
 before facing the Assembly. Be that as it may, there 
 is a stiff dignity in the language and an extreme com- 
 pression of thought differing from his later style. 
 
 One fact remains to be noted. Nowhere in this 
 speech is Philip named. An allusion to him has 
 been generally supposed in the repeated mention of 
 existing and acknowledged foes (§§ 11 and 41), as 
 opposed to contingent enemies such as Persia. JMr. 
 Mahaffy (Greek Lit., ii. 315) has, I think, shown 
 from the context itself good reason for doubting this 
 reference. This much, however, is beyond dispute, 
 that the gravity of the danger from Macedon was not 
 as yet apprehended by Demosthenes any more than 
 by other politicians. 
 
 In the course of the next year (353 B.C.) Pelopon- 
 nesian affairs engaged attention. Epaminondas had 
 left behind him two creations in the Peloponnese — an 
 independent Messene, and a new city, Megalopolis, 
 into which were incorporated the scattered villages of 
 the Arcadian league. These young communities had 
 grown up under the shelter of Thebes, but Sparta 
 bitterly resented her lost dominion, and ever since 
 the battle of Mantinea had watched her moment for 
 recovering it. Thebes was now hard pressed in the 
 Phocian war, and Sparta's opportunity seemed to 
 have come. But her designs must be decently 
 
40 DEMOSTHENES. [ciiAi-. n. 
 
 veiled. She proposed a general restoration of ancient 
 rights, by which all possessions held by the several 
 Greek states before the disturbing period of Theban 
 supremacy should be resumed. Athens among other 
 states would profit by it. She was allured by the 
 promise of the border town of Oropus, an old and 
 coveted possession now in the hands of Thebes. The 
 gain to Sparta herself was kept in the background, 
 but it was not far to seek. Messenia was again to 
 be Sparta's, and Megalopolis was to be dissolved under 
 the pretext of communal independence. Athens had 
 already, in 355 B.C., undertaken to help Messene in 
 the event of a Spartan invasion. Megalopolis, now 
 threatened by Spartan arms, and unable to look to 
 her natural protector Thebes, sent an embassy to 
 Athens. A counter - embassy arrived at the same 
 time from Sparta, 
 
 Each cause found heated advocates, and Demos- 
 thenes, at the beginning of the speech For the 
 Megalopolitans, says that one might fancy the 
 speakers in the debate to be Arcadian and Lacedaemo- 
 nian delegates, not Athenian advisers. The anti-Theban 
 feeling was at this time dominant at Athens, and to 
 plead for Theban allies was to uphold a losing cause. 
 Demosthenes adopted a line of professed neutrality, 
 but in effect he supported the application of Megalo- 
 polis. His primary thought is that the balance of 
 power must be maintained (an idea which recurs in 
 the speecli A^s^ainsl Aristocratcs, § 102). Athens could 
 not .afford to allow cither Thebes or Sparta to become 
 menacing to herself His opponents had laid stress 
 on the inconsistency of which Athens would be guilty, 
 if, after deliberately siding with Sparta at Mantinea 
 against Thebes and her Arcadian allies, she were now 
 to dissolve this friendship. To this objection Demos- 
 thenes opposes first the threatening ambition of Sparta, 
 who has violated the compact (§§ 6-10), and then the 
 
CHAP. II.] rUBLIC LIFE AND SPEECHES. 41 
 
 constant tradition of Athens to protect the oppressed 
 (§§ 14, 1 5). " Circumstances will be found to shift with 
 changing ambitions, but the policy of Athens is the 
 same" (§ 15). He discerns in the specious proposals 
 of Sparta a revival of old methods. It was " too late 
 in the day for her to become generous." That " each 
 state should possess its own " was a phrase with a well- 
 known historical meaning. Rather than help Sparta 
 to regain her former ascendency, Athens should, if 
 necessary, renounce the hope of Oropus. It would 
 be a grave mistake to reject now, as was once done 
 before, the suit of the Arcadians, and again to drive 
 them to seek other aid. 
 
 War between Sparta and Megalopolis followed. 
 The Athenians, whatever vote they may have 
 passed (of that we have no record), stood aloof 
 from the contest. Some years later, when the 
 Arcadians were again in distress, they looked not 
 to Athens but to Philip. In him they found a willing 
 protector, and they became among the trustiest of his 
 allies. 
 
 The speech For the Liberty of the Rhodians 
 is another utterance upon foreign policy, and may be 
 taken in this connection. It is akin to the speech 
 On the Synunories as touching the attitude of Athens 
 to Persia \ to that For the ATegalopolitaju, as being 
 the answer to another appeal against oppression. At 
 the end of the Social War (355 B.C.) Rhodes was 
 subjected to Mausolus, prince of Caria, a vassal of 
 Persia, and an oligarchy dependent on him was 
 established. On the death of Mausolus, ^#lo was 
 succeeded by his widow Artemisia, the democratic 
 exiles besought Athens to aid them in freeing their 
 country from the Carian yoke. There was a strong 
 popular feeling against Rhodes, which had led the 
 revolt of the allies against Athens (357 B.C.), and her 
 humiliation was hailed as a well-earned chastisement. 
 
42 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. ii. 
 
 Demosthenes had to take account of this feeling, and 
 to treat it with deHcacy and management. He 
 pointedly disclaims being the official patron of the 
 Rhodians (ovre yap 7rpo^€i'(u riov dvSpwv, § 1 5). In order 
 to put himself en rapport with his hearers, he even 
 assumes a tone of rejoicing over Rhodian misfortunes. 
 Yet in Athenian interest, and that only, he bids them 
 forget old grudges (p) [xinja-LKaKeli', §§ 15, 16). Then 
 he unfolds to them the larger aspects of the question. 
 The cause was that of democracy against oligarchy, 
 of freedom against oppression. A contest with oli- 
 garchy was a contest with an armed doctrine, one 
 in which no quarter was given (§§ 17-21). Having 
 carried his hearers with him through the political 
 argument, he is able to go one step farther, and to 
 venture now upon a touch of human sympathy. 
 " Though it may be said that the Rhodians are justly 
 punished, the occasion is not one for exultation. The 
 prosperous should always show an unselfish concern for 
 the distressed, seeing that the future is dark to all 
 men" (§ 21). But definite objections had also to be 
 met. It was said that interference with Rhodes would 
 probably entangle Athens in war with Artemisia, and 
 perhaps with Persia. Demosthenes deals twice with 
 this point (§§ 11-13 and §§ 22-24). He gives reason 
 for thinking that Artemisia would remain neutral. 
 As for the Persian king, his hostility, judging by recent 
 history, was not formidable, but in any case it ought 
 to be braved. This advice the orator shows (§§ 7-10) 
 not to be inconsistent with the position taken up in 
 the speech O/i the Sytnmorics. But a question of 
 right was also raised. Treaty engagements were urged 
 which bound Athens to non-intervention. Demos- 
 thenes denies that there would be here any infraction 
 of right ; but maintains that, even wore it otherwise, 
 Athens coultl not alone support treaty rights which all 
 other powers had agreed to violate. " When every other 
 
CHAP. II.] PUBLIC LIFE AND SPEECHES. 43 
 
 state is only seeking the means of wrong-doing, for us 
 alone to allege pleas of justice, in order to avoid serious 
 effort, I count not justice but cowardice" (§ 28). 
 Towards the close of the speech a lively attack is made 
 on an anti-democratic party in the state. It is an 
 anticipation of later and more scathing onslaughts 
 upon the leading politicians. The people are them- 
 selves in part to blame ; they keep in their confidence 
 proved partisans of the enemy. " You should have 
 regarded a man's post in poHtics exactly as you do his 
 post in war. You hold that the man who deserts the 
 post assigned him by his general, ought to be degraded 
 and to forfeit his pubUc privileges. Similarly those 
 who desert the political post inherited from their 
 ancestors, and who support an oligarchical policy, 
 ought to be disqualified from acting as your coun- 
 sellors." 
 
 Once again Demosthenes failed. From various 
 passages in the speech (§ i, § 3°, §§ 34, 35) it appears 
 that he had good hopes that the resolution would 
 pass ; he doubted whether it would be executed. 
 From a later speech {On the Peace, § 25) we learn 
 incidentally that Rhodes was in 344 B.C. still under 
 Carian rule. 
 
 The speech For the Rhodians has been tradition- 
 ally assigned, on the authority of Dionysius of Hali- 
 carnassus, to the same year as the First Pliilippic 
 (351 B.C.), and to a later period in that year. I 
 have never understood how the statesman who spoke 
 the First Philippic could within a few months re- 
 vert to an earlier point of view. Philip is indeed 
 mentioned once, but it is only a passing reference. 
 " Some of you, I see, constantly disparage Philip 
 as of no account, and dread the Persian king as a 
 powerful foe, when he chooses to be such. If we are 
 to despise the one too much to repel him, and are to 
 fear the other so far as to yield him everything, against 
 
44 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. ii. 
 
 whom, Athenians, shall we take the field?" (§ 24). 
 This is an advance upon some earlier speeches, but 
 its tone is ver)' different from that of the First Phi- 
 lippic. Dionysius is not always accurate as a his- 
 torian, and I am disposed to think, with Mr. Mahaffy, 
 that the speech ought to be brought forward either 
 into the same year as the speech For the Megalopo- 
 litans (353 B.c) or at latest into the year following.^ 
 As an independent argument it may be added' that 
 the manner in which the orator, appealing to the 
 recollection of his audience (§ 6), repeats the very 
 phrases he had used in the speech On the Symmories 
 seems to imply less of an interval between the 
 speeches than is commonly supposed At any rate, 
 the received chronology breaks the orderly develop- 
 ment of Demosthenes' thought, and offers nothing to 
 account for the retrograde view taken in the speech 
 For the Rhodians. 
 
 We must here turn back from the Assembly to the 
 law-courts, and observe again the activity of Demos- 
 thenes during this period in purifying home affairs. 
 In 353 B.C. he is once more in conflict with Andro- 
 tion, who had escaped condemnation in the former 
 trial. Androtion and certain of his fellows had been 
 called on to refund public moneys which they had 
 embezzled ; in default of payment they were liable to 
 imprisonment as state-debtors. Timocrates brought 
 forward in their interest a measure essentially altering 
 the existing law, by extending the time after which 
 state-debtors became liable to arrest This measure 
 was to be retrospective. It was pushed through the 
 
 * In this case we may accept the date given by Diodorus for 
 the death of Mausolus (353 B.C.) — .in event which from the 
 speech itself we infer to have recently happened — as .against 
 IMiny's d.ate (351 li.c.) The chronology of other e.astern events 
 alluded to is uncertain, but there is nothing, I believe, in it fatal 
 to the view put forward above. 
 
CHAP. II.] PUBLIC LIFE AND SPEECHES. 45 
 
 Assembly, but within a year after it passed Diodorus 
 and Euctemon indicted the proposer. Under these 
 circumstances Demosthenes composed the speech 
 Against Timocrates for Diodorus. Several pass- 
 ages of it are verbally repeated from the Androtion ; 
 the speech is a long one, and raises many curious 
 points of law. Demosthenes contends that the law 
 of Timocrates was carried informally, that it was in 
 substance unconstitutional, and would be mischievous 
 in its working. The arguments are by no means all of 
 equal value. Some seem to depend on oversights in 
 the drafting (§§ 79-81, and perhaps §§ 82, 83), others 
 are downright captious (§§ 85-87, and still more ob- 
 viously §§ 88, 89), while others remain that are pow- 
 erful and subtle. But from § 91 onwards he leaves 
 mere technicalities and verbal criticisms, and grapples 
 with the question in its wider issues. He shows 
 how the public services will suffer if the state has no 
 prompt method of enforcing its claims (§§ 91-95). 
 At the best of times it is no easy matter to keep pace 
 with the sudden calls of war, but under this new 
 statute "will the enemy, think you, wait the subter- 
 fuges and artifices of rogues at home ? " The system 
 of internal finance will also be deranged, for no 
 adequate provision is made for current expenditure 
 (§§ 96-101). He exposes the evils of retrospective 
 legislation, devised to shield political associates. "To 
 frame statutes about the past is not to legislate but 
 to protect criminals " (§ 116 ; cf. § 123). Towards the 
 end of the speech he uses a vivid illustration : 
 " Suppose that at this very moment you were to hear 
 a cry raised close to the court, and that you were 
 told ' The prison is opened, the prisoners are 
 escaping,' there is not one of you, however old or 
 indifferent, but would lend what help he could. 
 Suppose, further, that some one came up and said, 
 ' It is Timocrates who has set them free,' at that 
 
46 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. ii. 
 
 instant and without a hearing Timocrates would be 
 arrested and put to death. Well, Athenians, this 
 man you have now in your hands : not by stealth 
 has he done this deed, but in broad day by cheating 
 and cajoling you he has passed a law, which does 
 not open the prison-house but demolishes it, and 
 with the prison, the tribunals" (§§ 20S, 209). The 
 peroration is a dignified statement of the duty of 
 Athens above all states to guard her laws and espe- 
 cially her penal code. 
 
 The last forensic speech belonging to this early 
 period is the speech Against Aristocrates (352 b.c.) 
 Apart from its intrinsic excellence it has a special and 
 twofold interest. It is our chief authority on the law 
 of homicide at Athens ; it also presents a detailed 
 picture of coidotticri life in tliis century (p. 20). 
 Aristocrates had carried a resolution in the Council 
 declaring the person of Charidemus to be inviolable, 
 and any one who attempted his Ufe to be an outlaw 
 from the dominions of Athens and her allies. Chari- 
 demus was a soldier of fortune, a native of Oreus in 
 Euboea, who at this stage of his chequered career 
 was established as minister, commander-in-chief, and 
 brother-in-law to the Thracian prince Cersobleptes. 
 The Athenians, still grieving for the loss of Amphi- 
 polis, were impressed by the assurance that Charide- 
 mus would recover it for them (§ 14), though it was 
 by his faithlessness that it had once already slipped 
 from their grasp (§ 149). The proposal was checked 
 before it reached the Assembly, being impeached as 
 illegal by Euthycles, for whom Demosthenes composed 
 this speech. 
 
 The structure of the speech is unusually symmetri- 
 cal for Demosthenes. There is a formal threefold 
 division, according to which it will be shown, first, 
 that the proix)sal is illegal ; secondly, that it is against 
 the public interest ; thirdly, that Charidemus does not 
 
CHAP. II.] PUBLIC LIFE AND SPEECHES. 47 
 
 deserve such a distinction (§ 18). The arguments, 
 however, under the second and third head overlap 
 and interlace in the Demosthenic manner. The legal 
 case is stated from §§ 23-99. The Draconian law of 
 homicide is quoted and lucidly interpreted. The law 
 itself is a remarkable survival of a primitive period. 
 It forms the earliest of the strata out of which Athenian 
 criminal law was composed, and came down from a 
 time when private vengeance still existed, and expiatory- 
 rites were blended with punishment. The orator 
 proves, apparently with overwhelming force, that the 
 proposal of Aristocrates contravenes all the principles 
 of this code. Not having the text of the proposal, 
 we cannot be sure that such was the intention of its 
 author ; but the quotations reveal, at least, serious 
 ambiguities of phrase, and of these Demosthenes 
 avails himself to the uttermost. Under the second 
 head (§§ 100-143) the main contention is that the 
 Chersonese is endangered by the proposal. Here, as 
 had been said at the outset (§ i), lay the vital point 
 for deliberation. The jealousy of the Thracian princes 
 was the safeguard of the Chersonese; a strong monarchy 
 in that quarter might be fatal to Athenian interests, 
 and the decree of Aristocrates, being virtually in favour 
 of Cersobleptes, would give him a preponderant power 
 over his rivals. Cersobleptes was perhaps friendly at 
 present, but bitter experience had shown the value of 
 friendships with semi -barbarian potentates. Others, 
 moreover, with as good a claim as Charidemus, would 
 apply for a like honour. Was the state to become 
 the bodj'guard of every such adventurer? The pro- 
 posed decree tended as little to the honour of Athens 
 as to her interest. European Greeks were by it made 
 over to Cersobleptes in the same way as the Asiatic 
 Greeks were, by the peace of Antalcidas, surrendered 
 to Persia. Throughout this division of the speech the 
 argument is enforced by an apposite use of historical 
 
48 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. ii. 
 
 examples — an instrument which no one wields with 
 more effect than Demosthenes. The third topic is 
 the past life of Charidemus — how he had been in 
 Athenian, Olynthiac, Asiatic, and Thracian service, 
 and had played false to pretty nearly each employer 
 in turn. 
 
 In the epilogue Demosthenes broadly reviews 
 different principles of reward and punishment. He 
 contrasts the wise economy observed by the ■ elder 
 democracy in the distribution of honours with the 
 lavishness of later days. Nor were previous deserts 
 then allowed to atone for subsequent disloyalty, 
 whereas the chastisement of offenders was " an idea 
 now extinct in Athens " (§ 204). Amongst the visible 
 signs of this decline was the private magnificence that 
 stood beside public indigence. " Now our adminis- 
 trators have risen from beggary to wealth, and are 
 abundantly provided for years to come, while you 
 have not in the treasury sustenance even for one day's 
 march ; but the moment for action comes, and the 
 means are wanting. For in old days the people was 
 the master of its statesmen ; now it is their servant. 
 The fault is theirs who draw up resolutions like these, 
 and accustom you to despise yourselves, and to look 
 up to one or two individuals. I'hen they enter into 
 the heritage of your glory and your wealth. As for 
 you, you have no enjoyment of them ; you witness the 
 blessings of others, while your only part is that of 
 dupes. Oh ! how greatly would they groan, those 
 men of old, who died for freedom and for glory, who 
 left behind them memorials of many a noble deed, 
 could they but know that Athens has attained to the 
 style and rank of a dependant, and is taking counsel 
 whether she is to guard the person of Charidemus 1 
 Charidemus! woe the day!" (§§ 209, 210). The 
 spirit of Athenian elo(]uence forbatle the orator to end 
 here. 'I'he reason of the jury must be won, tiieir 
 
CHAP. II.] PUBLIC LIFE AND SPEECHES. 49 
 
 feelings must not seem to be stormed. So the key is 
 altered. The peroration of the speech is a calm 
 summary of the legal arguments (§§ 215-219). 
 
 It would appear that the proposal of Aristocrates 
 was confirmed in spite of Demosthenes. In the next 
 year Charidemus was in the Athenian service, and 
 was sent on a mission to aid Cersobleptes. Amadocus, 
 a rival prince, had meantime sought the protection of 
 Philip, who, entering Thrace, soon imposed his will 
 on him and Cersobleptes alike. Henceforth it was 
 against Macedon that Athens had to defend the 
 Chersonese. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 HIS PUBLIC LIFE AND SPEECHES. FROM THE RISE 
 OF MACEDON TO THE FALL OF OLYNTHUS (34S B.C.) 
 
 The power of Macedon had now been growing for 
 seven years, but had excited little observation. The 
 first mention of Philip in Demosthenes is in the 
 s^Q&c\i Against Lepdnes (354 B.C.); it is little more 
 than a sigh over lost possessions, Pydna and Potidasa. 
 In the speech On the Sy?nmorii's (354 B.C.) the allu- 
 sion to Philip is, at best, very doubtful (p. 39) ; in 
 the speech For the Megalopolitans there is none. The 
 speech On the Rhodians makes cursor}* mention of 
 Philip. In the speech Against Aristocratcs (353 B.C.) 
 he emerges more distinctly as the enemy of Athens 
 (§§ III, 112, § 1 16, § 121), but it is difficult not to 
 read something of contempt in the words Im. Suprov 
 ^'tAiTTTTov ToiTovt Tov MuKeSova (§ III), "I need not 
 ask whether you know of that Macedonian Philip." 
 He is then cited as an instance of restless but short- 
 sighted ambition, and that only by way of comment 
 on the Thracian prince Cersobleptes. Nor does a 
 later passage (§§ 11 8-1 21), in which he is made to 
 point a warning against faithless friendships, betray 
 any serious alarm. 
 
 The blindness of the Greek world to the rise of 
 the Macedonian power may be puzzling to us who 
 know the setiuel. But we must take into account 
 
CHAP. III.] PUBLIC LIFE AND SPEECHES. 51 
 
 first the contempt of the Greek for the barbarian, 
 which tended to obscure events. Macedon was out- 
 side the Hellenic pale. Thessaly might at a stretch 
 be included within it, but Mount Olympus was the 
 farthest limit. The Macedonian language was indeed 
 allied to the Greek, but a mixture of foreign elements 
 had almost effaced its Hellenic kinship. Far more 
 important than differences of language was the differ- 
 ent mode of life. The basis of Macedonian life was 
 not the city (ttoAcs), but the tribe (e^vos). The 
 people, instead of being self-governed, were under the 
 rule of a king ; and though their monarchy was prob- 
 ably a relic of the heroic age, and differed widely 
 from Asiatic despotism, yet civilised Greece con- 
 sidered it essentially barbarous. It was useless to 
 point to the true blood which ran in the veins of the 
 kings, who were descended from Heracles and the 
 Temenids of Argos, and one of whom, Alexander I., 
 so long ago as the time of the Persian invasion, had 
 run in the foot-race at Olympia, and as victor had 
 been celebrated by Pindar. 
 
 The first civilising efforts were made by Archelaus 
 I. (413-399 B.C.), the Peter the Great of this Russia of 
 the ancient world. He organised the army, fortified 
 towns, and opened up the country with roads ; but 
 the elements of civil life, and the industries of peace, 
 remained foreign to the people. Still less could the 
 higher culture of Greece make its way among them. 
 Archelaus gathered to his court Greek artists like 
 Zeuxis, dramatists like Euripides and Agathon, musi- 
 cians like Timotheus; he even sought to attract 
 thither Socrates. But whatever the court circle may 
 have acquired of refined tastes, the heart of the 
 people was untouched. Upon Archelaus' death 
 there followed anarchy and civil war for forty years. 
 Macedon was still an outlying district of barbarism. 
 
 Moreover, Macedon had not hitherto been strong 
 
52 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. hi. 
 
 enough to take an independent course of action. 
 Surrounded by enemies, it had waited upon the turns 
 of Greek pohtics, attaching itself now to Athens, now 
 to Sparta, as passing needs required. A tradition of 
 astute diplomacy had been created, but no great 
 statesman had yet appeared. Macedon had come to 
 be regarded as a makeweight which might turn the 
 doubtful scale of Greek ambitions, but not as an 
 independent force. It was by the aid of Sparta that 
 Amyntas, Philip's father, had been able to keep his 
 crown. ^Macedonian towns had till quite recently 
 been tributary to Athens. Philip himself and his 
 brother had been brought (369 b.c) by the dethroned 
 Eurydice as suppliants to the knees of the Athenian 
 general Iphicrates. 
 
 In 368 B.c, Philip, at the age of fifteen, was taken 
 by Pelopidas as a hostage to Thebes. There, during 
 three years of e.xile, he acquired all that Greek 
 culture could give. He observed closely the shifting 
 scenes of Greek politics, and the forces moving 
 behind them ; and above all, he learned military 
 tactics from the great Epaminondas. In 360 b.c he 
 became regent for his nephew, and presently took the 
 sovereignty for himself (359 b.c) Within less than 
 two years from his regency he had overcome enor- 
 mous difficulties. He had cheered the spirit of a 
 people broken by defeat, he had curbed a proud 
 nobility, he had set aside rival claimants to the 
 throne, and had thrust back his enemies from two 
 frontiers. He now set himself to reconstitute the army, 
 drawing closer the ties of military fellowship, and 
 turning to account the lessons of Ej^aminondas in the 
 organisation of the Macedonian phalanx, which re- 
 mained unconquered till it met the Roman legion. 
 But if Macedon was ever to become more than a 
 petty state, it was necessar)' for her, as it was for 
 Russia in later history, to push her borders to the 
 
CHAP. III.] PUBLIC LIFE AND SPEECHES. 53 
 
 sea. At present Greek colonies barred the way. 
 Three powers commanded the northern waters of the 
 ^gean, — Athens, Amphipolis, and the revived Olyn- 
 thus. A coahtion between any two of these might 
 have been fatal to Philip's projects. From the first 
 he pursued one consistent policy, that of isolating his 
 enemies, and playing off the jealousies of state against 
 state. Not until the arts of intrigue and diplomacy 
 were exhausted, would he resort to force. 
 
 Amphipolis first engaged his attention. This town 
 was strongly situated near the mouth of the Strymon. 
 It held the main road from east to west, and gave 
 access to the gold mines and the timber of Thrace. 
 It was a colony planted by Pericles in 437 B.C., as an 
 outpost of Athenian influence in that quarter. It had 
 been taken by Brasidas in the Peloponnesian war 
 (424 B.C.), and repeated efforts to recover it had 
 failed. Philip, on his accession, anxious to conciliate 
 the Athenians, withdrew the garrison placed there 
 by his predecessor, and renounced his claim. But 
 Athens neglected to occupy the town. Meanwhile 
 Philip, relieved from pressing dangers at home, seized 
 a pretext for attacking it. Envoys were sent to Athens 
 beseeching aid ; but secret negotiations had been in 
 progress between Philip and Athens, the purport of 
 which was that Athens should restore Pydna, which 
 had been wrested from Macedon, and in return receive 
 Amphipolis. With the embassy from Amphipolis 
 came a letter from Philip, and renewed assurances of 
 good will. He was besieging Amphipolis, he said, 
 in the Athenian interest, and intended to restore it 
 to them as rightful owners. The Athenians agreed 
 to the treacherous bargain, and were duped. Philip 
 took and kept Amphipolis (357 b.c.) 
 
 The Olynthians, now alarmed at the course of 
 events, made overtures to Athens. Philip's deputies 
 were also at hand to counterwork the petition. The 
 
54 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. hi. 
 
 king, they said, was still minded to restore Amphi- 
 polis, but the Athenians had not yet fulfilled their 
 part of the compact, the transfer of Pydna. At this 
 moment Athens was almost destitute of resources and 
 of aUies, for the Social War had lately broken out. 
 The Athenians were the less inclined to alienate 
 Philip and to renounce the hope of AmphipoHs, and 
 therefore rejected the Olynthian overtures. Olynthus, 
 estranged from Athens, welcomed Philip's advances. 
 He entered into alliance with them, and ceded Anthe- 
 mus, a disputed possession lying between Olynthus 
 and Macedon. Then he boldly laid hands on Pydna 
 (357 R-c), and besieged Potidaea, an Athenian town 
 which held the isthmus of Pallene. Succour was sent 
 from Athens, but too late to be of any avail. After a 
 protracted siege Potid^ea surrendered, and Philip 
 made it over to Olynthus as a further pledge of their 
 new friendship. The Athenian garrison he dismissed 
 home, with a declaration of peaceable intentions 
 towards Athens. 
 
 Thus Philip had robbed Athens of all her seaports 
 save one on the Thermaic Gulf, and had opened a 
 wide breach between his two most formidable opponents. 
 Amphipohs, his greatest prize, he now turned to good 
 account In the neighbourhood he founded a new 
 city, Philippi. among the mines of Mount Pangsus, 
 from which the yield of gold was a thousand talents a 
 year, sufficient to maintain his wars and pay his agents. 
 Timber for the construction of a fleet was supplied 
 from the mountains. The year 356 b.c was signalised 
 by three events of good omen for Philip, following one 
 upon another — the defeat of the Illyrians by Parmenio, 
 an Olympic victory in the chariot race, and the birth 
 of a son, Alexander. 
 
 For the next three years Philip was consolidating 
 his victories in the north. His apparent inaction 
 seems to have disarmed suspicion, and even to have 
 
CHAP. III.] PUBLIC LIFE AND SPEECHES. 55 
 
 lulled the vigilance of Demosthenes. But in 356 B.C. 
 the Athenians lost Methone, their last town on the 
 Macedonian coast, and Philip was brought within 
 reach of Thessaly, which was to be his stepping-stone 
 into Greece. Fortune gave him an opportunity such 
 as he loved, the Sacred War, which broke out in 355 
 B.C., being his pretext. The Amphictyonic Council, 
 at the instigation of Thebes, had imposed a fine on 
 the Phocians for sacrilege. The Phocians seized the 
 temple of Delphi, and soon applied the treasures of 
 the god to support their mercenaries. They then 
 allied themselves with the tyrants of Pherae. PhiHp 
 was thus able to appear as the champion at once of 
 freedom and of religion. A great victory in 352 B.C. 
 made him master of Thessaly. From the port of 
 Pagasae he dominated Euboea and menaced Athens. 
 Corsair ships issued hence, harassing the allies, pil- 
 laging Lemnos and Imbros, and capturing Athenian 
 merchantmen. A sacred trireme was on one occasion 
 carried off from the bay of Marathon. 
 
 Philip now conceived a more daring project, to 
 penetrate into Greece itself, and chastise the Phocians 
 in the heart of their own country. The news of his 
 march to Thermopylae roused the Athenians for once 
 to vigorous action. A citizen force was despatched, 
 and Philip found the gates of Greece closed against 
 him. For years to come this prompt deliverance was 
 a theme for orators, and a memory on which the 
 people complacently reposed. 
 
 In the latter half of the same year (352 B.C.), Philip, 
 seeing that events were not yet ripe for him in Greece, 
 fell back upon Thrace. He received the submission 
 of the Thracian princes, and advanced towards the 
 Thracian Chersonese, which Athens had not long since 
 recovered (357 b.c.) The news that he was besieging 
 Heraeon Teichos, a fort on the Propontis, arrived in 
 Athens in November 352 b.c. There was a panic in 
 
/ 
 
 $6 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. hi. 
 
 the city. At all hazards they must keep their hold 
 on the Chersonese, and secure their corn supplies from 
 the Euxine. An armament was voted, to be manned 
 with Athenian citizens. Reports then came that 
 Philip was ill — some said he was dead. The expedi- 
 tion was given up, and the old torpor returned. But 
 rumour was soon again busy with Philip and his 
 movements. He was meditating, it was said, the 
 overthrow of Thebes in combination with Sparta — he 
 had sent an embassy to Persia — he was fortifying 
 towns in Illyria {Phil. i. § 48). Splendid resolutions 
 were carried, but no action was taken. At length, 
 after a series of idle debates, Demosthenes, in the 
 second half of 351 b.c, surprised the Assembly by 
 coming forward before the recognised leaders of the 
 house, calling on the people to break once and for 
 all with the old system. 
 
 The First Philippic marked the beginning of a 
 long struggle between opposing principles. Hither- 
 to Demosthenes had attacked the existing adminis- 
 tration indirectly in the law courts ; now he placed 
 himself in open and personal antagonism to it He 
 felt the delicacy of his position, as we see from some 
 apologetic tones in the speech (§§ i, 15, 51). He 
 begins with a reference to the futile guidance of his 
 opponents as his own excuse for speaking, but per- 
 sonal bitterness there is none. The events of the 
 past year had revealed to Demosthenes, with tenible 
 distinctness, that the danger was great and imminent. 
 But he alone had eyes to see. The peace policy, 
 instituted after the Social War, was still cherished by 
 the people. The chief spokesman of this party was 
 Eubulus, who in 354 B.C. had become Steward of 
 the Treasury. An able financier, he had adajited his 
 whole system to one end, — the renunciation of foreign 
 politics, the encouragement of home industr)-, and 
 the comfort and amusement of the citizens. Upright 
 
CHAP. III.] PUBLIC LIFE AND SPEECHES. 57 
 
 and patriotic himself, he lent his influence to foster 
 the selfisjg and pleasure - seeking instincts of the 
 Athenians. His programme not only made no pro- 
 vision for war, but almost consciously excluded it. 
 Among his followers was found _Phocion, who, with 
 his stronger character and greater attainments, might 
 have been expected to leave his mark on the age. 
 Of all men in Athens he was most respected for a 
 stern virtue. But a philosophic training had left 
 him clear-sighted and despairing. Half-heartedly he 
 mixed in pubHc life, and accepted with an undis- 
 guised contempt the honours thrust on him by his 
 countrymen. The leader of aristocrats and men of 
 intellect, he allied himself also with Eubulus and 
 baser associates, and upheld abuses which he had 
 not the courage to mend. Isocrates, too, the elegant 
 but unstatesmanlike pamphleteer, was one of the 
 peace party. Four years ago he had put forth his 
 views on home and foreign policy. He probed the 
 Sjores of Athenian life with a sure touch, but his 
 proposed remedies were almost childish, and the 
 nerveless rhetoric in which he expounded these 
 remedies failed to make a single convert. The First 
 Philippic draws a picture of Athenian character in ^' 
 many respects identical with that of Isocrates. The 
 improvident city is portrayed with its make-shift policy, 
 ..devoid of all intelligence and scope, its bursts of 
 barren emotion with relapses into indifference, its 
 blows that are struck too late. The s peech is a 
 
 stirring callj^np^ l onger " l-n Ac \)^'^\\(^ hy rpgnlntinns — 
 
 and _despatches "^ \ 31), but to act__ vigorously and witli_- 
 a plan. Its object is to provide for the, future, not to 
 meet a passing danger. Nowhere else are the short- 
 comings of the people so unsparingly handled, but 
 correction is tempered with consolation, and the 
 eff"ect of the whole is to stimulate, not to benumb. 
 In style the First Philippic is in Demosthenes' most 
 
SS DEMOSTHENES. [chap. hi. 
 
 distinctive manner ; rapid, clear, incisive ; vigorously 
 reasoned, but instinct with passion ; with one central 
 >^and recurring thought led up to by converging lines 
 of argument. 
 
 The orator starts with the plain truth that the 
 Athenians must follow other counsels than those which 
 had prevailed. All had indeed gone ill with them, 
 but there was one element of hope for the future, 
 that they themselves were to blame for the past ; and 
 that they had not yet put forth their strength. He 
 reminds them how not so long ago they had risen 
 successfully against Spartan domination ; he sets 
 before them the examp le of their enemy, Philip, who 
 out of weakness had waxed great by vigilance and 
 energy. " He saw well that all the places he seized 
 are the open prizes of war, that those who are present 
 are the natural owners of the goods of the absent, 
 those who are willing to venture and to toil, of the 
 possessions of the careless" (§ 5). But there was 
 no divinity about his greatness. Even now at 
 the eleventh hour they might retrieve the past if 
 only they would one and all shake off their apathy. 
 *' Philip is not a man to rest satisfied with conquests 
 won, he is ever enlarging his circle, and whilst we wait 
 and fold our hands, he envelopes us on all sides with 
 his t5)ils. When then, Athenians, when will you do 
 your duty ? What are you waiting for ? For necessity ? 
 Then what are we to think of present events ? To 
 my mind, the strongest necessity a free man knows is 
 shame for his cause. Or tell me, do you prefer to 
 stroll about and ask one another, Is there any news? 
 ^^■hy, what newer thing could there be than a 
 Macedonian subjugating Athenians, and ordering 
 the affairs of Cireece? Is Philip dead? No, he is 
 only ill. Dead or ill, what difference to you? If 
 anything should befall him you will soon raise up 
 another Philip for yourselves " (§§ 7-1 1). 
 
CHAP. III.] PUBLIC LIFE AND SPEECHES. 59 
 
 Demosthenes then proceeds to explain his own 
 scheme, which is composed of two parts. First a 
 ' fleet of fifty triremes must he equipped, which shall be 
 Kept in reserve, always ready to sail at short notice, 
 and forestall Philip's descents on the coast. Citizens 
 must serve on board the fleet (§§ 16-18). This part 
 of the plan stands in somewhat loose connection with 
 the rest. It is mentioned briefly, and is hardly an 
 essential point, for it does not enter into the financial 
 statement which follows. The orator passes rapidly to 
 the second part, which contains the pith_pf the speech. \/^ 
 (§§ i9"3°)- -A- smfJl standinof nrmy must be kqDt up 
 " for offensive o p(:iations, c unaiotiag ui part of citizens . 
 "Talk not of your 10,000 or 20,000 mercenaries, 
 mere forces on paper" {hria-ToXiiialovi Suva/iets, lit. 
 " forces that exist in despatches," § 1 9). His pro- 
 posal, he is aware, was a modest one compared to 
 more ambitious but unexecuted projects ; it was, 
 however, as much as their present resources could, 
 bear, and it was capable of expansion. All he asks 
 for is 2000 infantry and 200 cavalry, but he insists 
 that one-fourth of each arm shall be Athenian citizens. 
 He shows from experience how necessary this was. ■ '^' 
 The oflftcers too should be Athenians, and chosen not 
 for show but for service. " Putting aside some one 
 general whom you send to the field, your generals all 
 parade in the processions with the masters of the 
 ceremonies. Like modellers of wax figures, you 
 ^ choose your infantry and cavalry officers for the 
 market and not for war " (§ 26). (A financial state- 
 ment follows. A scheme finding ways and means / 
 was here read out, but not being an integral part oT 
 the speech, it has not been preserved.) 
 
 In the third division of the speech (§§ 31-50) he 
 reverts again to his central topic — a permanent force 
 and personal exertions — and approaches it from 
 another side. The Athenians could not at any 
 
6o DEMOSTHENES. [chap. hi. 
 
 moment send succours northward, owing to the north- 
 erly winds of summer and the storms of winter. 
 They must therefore station their armament through- 
 out the year at Lemnos, Imbros, or some adjoining 
 island, from which they could annoy Philip and 
 protect the allies. Thus they would no longer lose 
 place after place by arriving too late. " It is the part 
 of skilled strategists not to follow upon events, but to 
 direct them" (§ 39). Athenian warfare is," however, 
 l ike barbarian bo.xing. " When a barbarian is struck, 
 he always feels for the blow ; strike him elsewhere, 
 and there go his hands ; parry the blow and look his 
 adversary in the face he cannot and will not " (§ 40). 
 Philip's restlessness seemed to be providentially 
 ordained as a spur to quicken their slow intent ; it 
 could not but rouse them unless they had fallen into 
 a last despair. A war that had been begun to chastise 
 Philip had become a war of self-defence. It was time 
 for them once more to fight their own battles (here 
 again he strikes the dominant note), to do more 
 than send out empty galleys and idle hopes from the 
 platform — armaments which excited the laughter of 
 the enemy and the deadly apprehension of the allies. 
 They need only go forth, and " the war itself would 
 discover the weak places of Philip's power" (§ 44). 
 " Citizens of Athens should be at once soldiers in the 
 field, witnesses of the conduct of the war, and judges 
 of the general on his return" (§ 47). They might 
 then hope for a better stamp of general, not one that 
 " braved death two or three times over in the law- 
 courts, but never once dared to face death on the 
 battlefield " (§ 47). They had had enough of accusa- 
 tion and ncws-mongering : "Away with such talk! 
 Sure we arc of this, that Philip is our enemy, that he 
 robs us of our own, that he has long insulted us, 
 that all we have tnisted to others to do for us has 
 turned out to have been done against us, that what 
 
 a: 
 
CHAP. III.] PUBLIC LIFE AND SPEECHES. 6i 
 
 remains depends upon ourselves, that unless we are ^ 
 now willing to fight him abroad, we may be compelled-^ 
 to fight him here " (§ 50). 
 
 The First Philippic is one of a series of Philippics 
 on which we now enter. The series naturally falls 
 into two groups. The first includes the speeches 
 delivered while Philip was still a foreign power seek- 
 ing admission into Greece — the First Philippic (351 
 B.C.), and the three Olynthiacs (349 B.C.) The 
 second group belongs'to the period subsequent to the 
 peace of Philocrates (346 B.c), and comprises the 
 speech On the Peace (346 B.C.), the Second Philippic 
 (344 B.C.), the speech On the Embassy (343 b.c), 
 On the Chersonese (341 B.C.), and the Thii-d Philippic 
 (341 B.C.) Philip had by that_ time _securgd _ 3. font- 
 hold in Gxeece, and been received into the Amphi c - 
 tyonic Council. 
 
 During the earlier period (351 to 346 B.C.) De- 
 mosthenes stood almost alone in Athens. Ranged 
 against him were all easy-going citizens, Avith their 
 leaders, the philosophers and men of letters, the 
 commercial classes, the short-sighted patriots, and as 
 the years went on an increasing band of Philip's 
 hirelings. In the speeches of this period he is_a.t ' 
 once combating Philip, and a more insidious foe, the .' 
 Athenian people. His voice has many tones — in- ' 
 dignation, scorn, warning, encouragement — but the 
 theme is always one. He appeals to the ar-oc; i 
 €Ka(rro9, to the indiv idual man, to the will and to the ■ 
 conscience ; and strives to kindle a spirit capable of 
 sustained effort. But he sees that he is pursuing a 
 fugitive object. The people, once assembled, seem 
 to be alive with generous sentiments ; they love to / 
 hear of the past and of great deeds which they may ['' 
 jsmulate. Decrees are carried and there is an 
 Il lusory sense__of.jiuty done. No sooner has the 
 intoxication passed off than each man seeks how to 
 
62 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. in. 
 
 shirk his own part. The emotion which is spent 
 
 upon itself weakens the capacity for ggaiiijie action. 
 
 Demosthenes attempts to shame his hearers by pointing 
 
 yjto FhiH p. He is the embodiment of action, they 
 
 ^ / §xceT in barren talk. He possesses the verj- qualities 
 ) for which they once were famed. In the mouth of 
 an adversary we read this description of Athenian 
 character in Thucydides (i. 70): " They are equally 
 quick in the conception and execution of every hew 
 plan. . . . They are bold beyond their strength ; they 
 run risks which prudence would condemn ; and in 
 the midst of misfortune they are full of hope. . . . 
 Their bodies they devote to their country, as though 
 they belonged to other men ; their true self is their 
 mind, which is most truly their own when employed 
 in her service. ... To do their duty is their only 
 holiday, and they deem the quiet of inaction to be 
 as disagreeable as the most tiresome business." 
 Personal service is now the one thing they grudge 
 to their country. 
 
 Of Philip's movements for the next two years we 
 know little. He was working darkly, though doubt- 
 less with an aim ; and his apparent inaction may have 
 been partly meant to qj'^t suspicion. When next he 
 comes into view he is engaged in a design which must 
 have been long premeditated. He had already estab- 
 lished three main points of contact with the sea, — at 
 / Amphipplij^ on the Strymonic Gulf (Gulf of Con- 
 
 \/ tessa), at Methone on the Thermaic Gulf (Gulf of 
 Salonica), and at Pa;\asa; (Volo) in Thessaly. But 
 between the two gulfs mentioned there lay the un- 
 subdued promontory of Chalcidice, separating his 
 kingdom from Thrace and the Euxine, and studded 
 with Greek colonics. We have already seen how 
 the Olynthian confederacy was broken up by Sparta, 
 (p. 3). At the accession of Philip the league was 
 partially restored, though Athens as well as Macedon 
 
CHAP. III.] PUBLIC LIFE AND SPEECHES. 63 
 
 had done her best to crush its growth (364 b.c.) 
 We have also seen how Athens in 357 B.C. rejected 
 the suit of Olynthus, and the bribes by which PhiUp 
 bought her friendship. But the Olynthians now saw 
 themselves hemmed in by the encroachments of 
 Macedon ; Thrace was being subjugated, Thessaly 
 had succumbed, and their turn must come next. 
 In 352 B.C. they made peace with Athens and an 
 alliance was discussed (Aristoc?: § 109), at which 
 Philip marked his displeasure by making a demon- 
 stration against Olynthus. The alliance fell through, 
 and Philip, contenting himself with this, retired for 
 a while into Illyria and Epirus. Though capable, as 
 {q\v men have been, of swift decisive movements, he 
 also knew how to wait. He had many agents in the 
 Chalcidic towns working upon the discordant in- 
 terests of the league, and in Olynthus itself he had 
 gained influential citizens. It was probably midsum- 
 mer 349 B.C. when he entered Chalcidice with an 
 army, and besieged some of the confederate towns. 
 Up to the last professions of peace were on his lips 
 ( Chcrs. §59; Phil. iii. §11). Olynthus now sent an 
 embas sy to A^e ns, proposing al liance and beseech- 
 mg help^_ Events had of la-*^e /^larched rapidly, and 
 the blindness which had led the people to reject the 
 prayer of Amphipolis in 357 B.C. was no longer 
 possible. On this occasion the First Olynthiac 
 was spoken. 
 
 The chronology and sequence of the Olynthiac 
 orations cannot be determined with certainty. The 
 discussion is too minute for this place, but it is prob- 
 able that all three speeches belong to 349 b.c, and 
 that the traditional order of the speeches is right. It 
 is strange that in the case of a speaker so free 
 from vagueness as Demosthenes, the speeches them- 
 selves should not throw more light upon the order in 
 which they come. But the main situation is the same 
 
64 DEMOSTHENES. chap. hi. 
 
 throughout, and the interval between them is brief. 
 Philip's attack is directed not yet against Olynthus, 
 but against the confederate cities. Demosthenes, 
 moreover, is in a sense tongue-tied ; he is leading up 
 to a measure on which he dares not bring a regular 
 motion. By the law of Eubulus, the Festival Fund 
 / (p. 1 6) could not be appropriated to war purposes, 
 
 yand the proposer of such a measure was liable 
 to an indictment. It is this that hampers Demos- 
 thenes all through the Olynthiacs. He is aware that 
 no substantial good can be done till the financial 
 system is reformed, and, therefore, while pleading for 
 Olynthus and proclaiming the urgency of the crisis, 
 he also impresses on his hearers that a change of 
 administration is the primary requisite. But the pre- 
 vailing faction was strong, and the subject had to be 
 warily approached. In the First Olynthiac he states 
 the two alternative methods of raising funds, with a 
 feigned acquiescence in whichever method the people 
 approves. In the Third Olynthiac he boldly pro- 
 nounces that the Festival Fund must be applied to 
 war. This marked advance would alone be almost 
 decisive in favour of keeping the Third Olynthiac in 
 its present place. The relation of the other two 
 speeches to one another is a far more doubtful point 
 
 To return to the First Olynthiac. Tlie petition of 
 Olynthus seems to have met with little opposition. 
 Before Demosthenes spoke, it had probably been re- 
 solved to conclude the treaty, and to send help.^ What 
 Demosthenes demands is ^;onipt action, and the 
 simultaneous despatch of two citizen forces, one to 
 ^■^ defend Olynthus, the other to harass Macedon. 
 
 The crisis itself, he says, is an elo(]ucnt call to 
 ^action. The succour you send to Olynthus must 
 consist of Athenian troops, and be sent promptly; 
 
 ^ The tone of the speech points to this conchision ; and the 
 use of the article r^v po^Otiav (§ 2) is also significant. 
 
CHAP. III.] PUBLIC LIFE AND SPEECHES. , 65 
 
 with it must go an embassy to announce its coming, 
 and to defeat Philip's intrigues in the city. The 
 King's absolutism, helpful as it is in war, happily 
 creates a mistrust in free communities. The Olyn- 
 thians see by the fate of other cities that they have 
 now to fight, not for glory or for a strip of territory, 
 but to save themselves from ruin and slavery. A 
 longed for opportunity has presented itself to you. 
 Olynthus, by no intervention of yours, has fallen out 
 with Philip, and may be made a fast friend. Seize 
 the moment, and beware of repeating former errors. 
 Think of Amphipolis, Pydna, Potidaea, Methone, •/ 
 Pagasce, all lost through our neglect. "Always letting 
 
 slip the present, and Jancying that the future will take_ . 
 
 care of itself, we have ourselves raised Philip to a 
 height of power greater than that of any previous 
 king of Macedon " (§ 9). By the grace of the gods 
 we can to-day repair something of the past, and wipe 
 out the shame. But if now we abandon Olynthus, 
 the highway is opened for Philip to go whither he will. 
 Judge what he will do by what he has done. Con - ' 
 trast " th at activity which is part of his habit and very, / 
 'Semg " with your indolence] '~'lf it is to be his firm 
 principle ever to outdo the past, and yours to take 
 nothing heartily in hand, what, think you, can we 
 hope to be the end? In the gods' name, is there 
 one among you so simple as not to know that, Jf we 
 are so careless, the war yonder will soon be here "i ' ^ 
 And in that case, Athenians, I fear jt will be with us^-j / 
 as with men who borrow lightly at a high interest. __J ^ 
 They have a brief spell of prosperity, and then they 
 lose their capital itself. So, I fear that we may turn 
 out to have paid dearly for our indolence, that our 
 pleasure-seeking ways may force us in the end into 
 many a hard and unwelcome task, and that even our 
 home jiossessions maybe at stake" (§§ 14, 15). 
 The second part of the speech (§§ 16-20) contains 
 F 
 
66 ^ DEMOSTHENES. [chap. hi. 
 
 his positive advice. The assistance sent to Olynthus 
 must be t\vofold, in order to be effective. One force 
 / / must be^ despatched to save the Chalcidic town s, 
 \/\' another to harass JNlacedon. As for the money, there 
 was a fund ready to hand (so cautiously does he in- 
 dicate the Festival Fund), if it were thought well to 
 use it Failing that, nothing was left but extraordi- 
 nary taxation — i n one way or other supplies mus t 
 ~=^ b e forthcoming. Demosthenes expressly declines to 
 frame a motion concerning the Festival Fund ; he 
 merely expresses his view that the receipt of a salary 
 from the treasury ought to be conditional on service. 
 
 The third division of the speech (§§ 21-27) is in its 
 main thought similar to the first ; under another aspect 
 he shows how favourable the moment was for action. 
 Philip's position, he says, has weaknesses in it not 
 visible at first sight. He has been disappointed at 
 the resistance he has met with. His allies, the Thes- 
 salians, true to their character, are showing signs of 
 wavering, and the Illyrians would gladly throw off the 
 yoke. ^In_Philip's necessities behold your opportuni- 
 ties. Turn them to account, as he would do were 
 lie in your case. Above all, remember that now you 
 have to choose between war abroad and war at your 
 own door. Once Olynthus has fallen, who is to pre- 
 vent him from marching on Attica ? Thebans ? Whv 
 — though it is a harsh thing to say — they will aid him. 
 Or Phocians? They cannot help themselves. And 
 an invasion, if it comes, will mean rjuin and sham e. 
 
 The peroration is a brief appeal to the rich, to the 
 .young, and to the people's advisers, each to take his 
 share in a cause in which all have an equal interest. 
 
 The speech missed its chief aim. A Hi n ace was 
 indeed made ; but if any succour was sent it was 
 merely the mercenary force under Chares, which from 
 other sources we know to have been despatched in 
 349 B.C. From certain passages {Olynth. L §§ 16, 17; 
 
CHAP. III.] PUBLIC LIFE AND SrEECIIES. 67 
 
 Olynili. ii. § 11) it might seem that the First and 
 Second Olyiithiac were both deUvered before assistance 
 was sent. But the tone of the Second Olynthiac im- 
 plies that it is designed to meet a mood of despond- 
 ency, due probably to some miscarriage in the war. 
 In this light we can see the special force of §§ 27-29. 
 From these paragraphs the inference is natural that 
 complaints were raised by a clique of politicians against 
 the general who was out on service. We may con- 
 jecture that Chares, being short of proper supplies 
 from home, had been indulging his predatory tastes. 
 
 Though the Second Olynthiac would, on this suppo- 
 sition, follow the First Olynthiac^ there is a close re- 
 semblance between the point of view taken in each. 
 The introductions to the two speeches are very similar 
 {piyntli. i. §§ 5-10; ii. §§ 1-4); and Philip's relations 
 towards Thessaly are described in almost identical 
 language. Only it must be observed that the leading 
 idea of the Second Olynthiac — that Ph ilip's power is 
 less formida ble than it seems — is merely sketched in 
 the First {Olynth. i. § 21 ff.) In the Second Olyn- 
 thiac the thought is developed under various aspects, 
 always as an incentive to increased energy on the part 
 of the Athenians. Philip's external weakness is por- 
 trayed in his relations with his allies (§§ 5-10), his 
 inn er we akn_e_ss in his relations with his own subjects 
 and friends (§§ i/).-2i). These are the central divi- 
 sions round which the rest is grouped. There is a 
 subtle symmetry in the structure, which only yields 
 before a close analysis. After the exposition of the 
 first idea, an objection is answered (§§ 9, 10), and 
 practical exhortation follows (§§ 11-13). A corre- 
 sponding method is observed in dealing with the 
 second idea. 
 
 Philip's power, says Demosthenes, is based on per- 
 jury and wrong; by bribes and promises, he has 
 cheated in succession Athens, Olynthus, and Thessaly. 
 
68 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. hi. 
 
 His artifices are now exhausted, and his allies, whose 
 eyes are opened, will fall away. Forts and havens do 
 not in themselves constitute power : on justice alone 
 can a durable structure be reared Bear aid then, and 
 that instantly, to the Olynthians ; enter into negotia- 
 tions with the Thessalians, but be sure that you back 
 /up your words with actions, for Athens has a name 
 for facile speech, and her promises are distrusted. 
 Macedon in itself, and apart from allies, js not for- 
 "midable. The people have little sympathy with the 
 ambition of their prince, and with a glor}' of which 
 they do not reap the fruits; they are weary of incessant 
 wars, which cut them off from home life, and shut 
 the ports upon the hard-won products of their industry. 
 Philip's famous bodyguard is of little worth ; his jeal- 
 ous dislike of excellence banishes men of ability, and 
 none are left as his companions but brigands and 
 buffoons. " At present, no doubt, prosperity casts 
 these blemishes into the shade : success has a wonder- 
 ful power of hiding such base elements from view. 
 But the first check to his arms will bring all to light. 
 And I think we shall not have long to wait, if it be 
 the gods' will and your resolve. In the human body 
 while a man is in good health he is not aware of local 
 ailments, but on the first touch of illness, all starts 
 into life, rupture or sprain, or any other unsoundness 
 in the system. So too with states and sovereigns ; 
 so long as they carry on war abroad, their defects 
 escape the general eye ; but once they come to 
 grapple with a frontier war, everything is revealed " 
 
 (§§ 20, 2 0.1 
 
 Philip, you say, is favoured by fortune. Yes, but 
 
 * The idea of tliis passage is possibly Ixirrowed from Plat. 
 Rep. viii. p. 566 E. It is remarkable that the same ill'.istralion 
 is almost verbally repeated in 'JVit- Crown (^ 19S). There, by a 
 boltier application, /Eschincs is the latent unsoundness which 
 disturbs the body politic. 
 
CHAP, m.] PUBLIC LIFE AND SPEECHES. 69 
 
 Athens is more highly favoured, if only she would do 
 her duty. " But here we are sitting still, and doing 
 nothing; and the sluggard cannot command the 
 services even of his friends, much less those of the 
 gods. No wonder indeed that he, marching and ■ \ 
 toiling in person, present at every point, never letting 
 an opportunity slip or a season go by, prevails over ^ 
 us who are p utting off , p assing vote s, and asking v 
 questions . This does not surprise me. . . . What I " 
 am surprised at is, that you, Athenians, who ip-ioxmer 
 days fought the cause of Greece against the Lacedae- 
 monians, who, rejecting many opportunities of selfish 
 aggrandisement, spent your own substance in contri- 
 butions, and bore the brunt of danger in the field, — 
 and all to protect the common rights, — that you now 
 
 s hrink from service, and are slow to con tribnt^p in 
 
 defence of your own possessions " (§§ 23, 24). 
 Hitherto you have been accusing one another, trusting 
 to others rather than to yourselves, and letting time go 
 by. Your fortune can never mend until your conduct 
 is changed. Nothing is now left for us to keep — we 
 have to recover all. The work is ours, and must be 
 done immediately ; ourselves and our property must 
 be put at the disposal of the state. Not until we do 
 our part, can we call our generals to account. Ill- 
 supplied by you, they embark on enterprises of their 
 own ; they are recalled, and brought to trial for mis- 
 conduct. While you are wrangling and governing by»/ 
 a clique of orators and generals, the public interest 
 suffers ; one class bears the burdens, the others pass 
 votes of censure. When will you become your own 
 masters, and cease to follow the blind bidding of 
 leaders ? The sum and substance of my advice is j 
 this, that you should aU_con tribu te y_o_ur shar£jp_JtJ:ie j 
 war, ail serve in turn, and^^iyeJiLJlli-an_equaLiieariiig 
 m~youFcounsels7 judging each proposal on its-meEttSy 
 and apart from personal influence. "" 
 
t/f 
 
 70 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. hi. 
 
 No reinforcements, it would seem, were despatched 
 between the time of the Second and Third Olynthiacs. 
 The three main expeditions which we know to have 
 been sent during the war, are each connected with an 
 embassy from Olynthus, and of such repeated embas- 
 sies there is no hint in the speeches. In the Third, 
 no less than in the preceding Olynthiacs, the outbreak 
 of the war is treated as quite recent {Olvrith. iii. § 6 : 
 cf. i. § 7 ; ii. § i). Demosthenes still speaks as if all 
 had yet to be done ; for the first expedition of relief 
 under Chares he probably regarded as too ineffectual 
 to deserve the name. Olynthus itself, as distinct from 
 the Chalcidic towns, is not represented as in more 
 pressing danger than before. Yet the Third Olyn- 
 thiac is separated from the other two by a marked 
 difference of character. The buoyant confidence with 
 which, in the two first speeches, the orator had wel- 
 comed the opportunity, has given way to a tone of 
 anxiety :\r\d pnssi nnntp wnrnfii^ Touches of light 
 irony no longer find place. ^V ith indignant remon- 
 strance he strives to dispel illusions ; he rebukes and 
 cliastens an undue exultation, caused doubtless by 
 trivial successes of mercenaries. In this mood it was 
 to be feared that the people would forget the lessons 
 of the past, and content themselves with being spec- 
 tators of the war instead of actors in it. So Demos- 
 thenes abandons his attitude of reserve, and speaks 
 out some hard truths for which the ears of his audi- 
 ence had been gradually prepared. In attacking the 
 administration of Eubulus he strikes at the heart of 
 the mischief F or the first time he openly dor]r;r p«; 
 t hat the fund nnw npprojirint.'d tn tli. - festivals nuis^ 
 b e devoted to war. A war ta.\, which he had before 
 put forward as the only alternative, was a progressive 
 tax upon property, and fell on all the citizens, except 
 the poorest (p. 24). It was unpojiular and difficult 
 to raise, and fit only to be a supplementary or occa- 
 
CHAP. III.] PUBLIC LIFE AND SPEECHES. 71 
 
 sional expedient Demosthenes demands that the 
 law by which the surplus revenue was passed to the 
 Festival Fund shall first be formally repealed. At 
 Athens a statute could not, as in Roman law, be 
 implicitly abrogated. A body called the Nomothetse 
 were appointed every year to revise the laws ; they 
 were, in fact, a jury invested with the functions of a 
 legislative committee. Demosthenes asks that such a 
 commission should deal with the Theoricon ; the 
 repeal of the existing law would clear the way for a 
 definite motion. The question of the Theoricon runs 
 through every division of the speech ; each line of 
 argument converges upon this point (§§ 10-13, i9> 
 31, 2,^ ff.) The epilogue (§ t,^ ff) sketches rapidly 
 the working of a scheme by which the distribution 
 of the Festival Fund might be regulated without being 
 abolished, A skeleton of the speech is here added. 
 
 The speakers, says Demosthenes, who talk to you 
 of punishing Philip have taken no reckoning of facts. 
 The time is past when this language might have been 
 used ; our first concern now is how to save our allies. 
 I feel some difficulty, however, in advising you, for 
 hitherto you have failed from want of will, not of 
 knowledge. I must ask you, therefore, to bear with 
 me if I speak to you with some plainness. 
 
 You remember three years ago how you resolved 
 to send an expedition against PhiHp — how reports 
 came that he was ill, and the expedition was aban- 
 doned. There is another such crisis to-day; do not 
 repeat the old mistake. It has long been your wish 
 that Olynthus should be at war with Philip ; events 
 have worked out your wish. Let us then aid Olyn- 
 thus vigorously, and with all our heart. When Olyn- 
 thus has fallen, Athens will be endangered. From 
 hostile Thebans or impoverished Phocians there is 
 nothing to hope. We shall be constrained, instead 
 of aiding others, to seek aid ourselves. 
 
72 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. hi. 
 
 We are resolved, you say, to help Olynthus ; but 
 how is it to be done? Do not be startled at my 
 answer. Appoint a legislative commission, not to 
 frame new laws (you have enough already), but to 
 repeal such existing laws as are mischievous — those, 
 I mean, by which the fund s whiclT_ om^jQ-be-ftf>plted 
 to war are distributed among lestival-seers at hom e, 
 as well as those which permit evasions of military 
 duty. U ntil these laws are formally abrogated, you 
 cannot expect any one to bring ruin on himself by 
 venturing on a salutary' proposal. 
 
 Resolutions by themselves are useless ; had it de- 
 pended on resolutions, Philip would have been chas- 
 tised long ago. Let us now act, and in good earnest; 
 let us not throw the blame of past failure upon others, 
 when all are equally in fault. The only practical 
 method of attaining our end is to deal with the Fes- 
 tival Fund ; show me any other means, and I will 
 gladly accept it. " But I wonder if it ever has been, 
 or ever will be, that when a man has spent his all 
 on what is bad, he should have what he has lost 
 to spend aright " (§ 1 9). Let us face hard realities, 
 and not be misled by our wishes. It would be as 
 mean as it would be foolish to suffer Philip to enslave 
 Greek states, and all for want of supplies. 
 
 I do not wantonly court unpopularity. I would but 
 imitate the candour of the statesmen of early times, 
 who did not humour their audience when great inter- 
 ests were at stake. The subservience of later -day 
 politicians has exalted them, and at your expense. 
 Look on the two picture s. — Athens of old^ and Athen s 
 as sTie is. """ 
 
 " FoF~lTve and forty years our fathers ruled over 
 a willing Greece; more than 10,000 talents they 
 brought into the Acropolis ; the king of Macedon 
 jjaid them that submission which a barbarian owes 
 to Greeks ; many glorious trophies they erected in 
 
CHAP. III.] PUBLIC LIFE AND SPEECHES. 73 
 
 memory of their own prowess by land and sea ; 
 alone of all men they have left an inheritance of 
 renown which envy cannot touch" (§§ 24, 25). Such 
 were they in their relations to Greece. In their 
 own city the public edifices were of incomparable 
 beauty and grandeur, private houses were of a modest 
 simplicity (see p. 15). Turn now to the present. 
 At a time when the field was free, and there was none 
 to contest the prize with us, — for Sparta had fallen, 
 and Thebes had her hands full, — " when we might 
 have held our own securely, and been umpires of the 
 claims of others, we have been robbed of our territory, 
 we have spent more than 1500 talents to no purpose; 
 the allies whom we gained in war have been lost to 
 us in peace through yonder leaders ; we have trained 
 into greatness our enemy and rival. If not, I would 
 ask any one to come forward and tell me whence, but 
 from the heart of Athens, has Philip drawn his strength. 
 But, I am told, things abroad may be bad, our home 
 affairs are now better. What are the proofs? The 
 parapets that we whitewash, the road that we repair, 
 the fountains, and such like trumpery ? Look now at 
 the men of whose administration these are the fruits. 
 They have exchanged beggary for wealth, obscurity 
 for eminence ; some have erected private houses 
 more magnificent than the public buildings ; and as 
 Athens has been abased, so have they been exalted " 
 
 (§§ 27-29). 
 
 What is the cause of the change ? It is this. 
 Formerly the people had the courage to fight its own 
 battles, and was master of its statesmen. " Now 
 political leaders have the disposal of emoluments ; 
 all business passes through their hands. You, the 
 body of the people, emasculated, stripped of treasures 
 and of allies, are reduced to the rank of menials and 
 supernumeraries, only too happy if your friends dole 
 you out festival moneys, and get up special processions, 
 
74 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. hi. 
 
 and, to crown your manly conduct, you feel grateful 
 for being offered what is your own. Meanwhile, 
 they coop you up within the very walls of the city, 
 and lead you to your pleasures ; they make you 
 tame and obedient to the touch. To my mind it is 
 impossible that lofty and generous sentiments can be 
 inspired by mean and paltry actions. The sentiments 
 of men must bear the exact impress of their habits " 
 
 (§§31,32). 
 
 If you will retu rn to the ancient ways, — if you will 
 serve and work and give of your abundance, you may 
 yet achieve some solid good. You may free your- 
 selves from these pittances which are like the diet 
 physicians prescribe to their patients. ' As the sick 
 man's diet neither imparts strength nor allows him 
 (juietly to die, so these doles of yours are not enough 
 to be of substantial benefit, nor do they allow you to 
 pass to something better in despair" (§ 33). In time 
 of peace let the citizens still enjoy the bounty of the 
 state ; in time of war let the state exact service from 
 all, — service in the field from the young, service in 
 organising and supervising from the old. What is 
 bounty in the one case will be salary in the other. 
 It is not enough for us to sit idle, listening to reported 
 victories of this or that man's mercenaries ; we must 
 work ourselves in our own cause, and not desert the 
 post of virtue bequeathed us by our ancestors. 
 
 " I have said, I think, all that I deem expedient ; 
 I pray that you may take whatever course is likely 
 to conduce to the good both of the country and of 
 yourselves." V I • 
 
 No immediate action, as far as we know, followed 
 this speech. I'.ut early in 348 B.c new troubles 
 arose. Through Macedonian intrigue, and against 
 I )emosthenes' advice, Athens engaged in a costly and 
 futile enterprise on behalf of Plutarchus in Eubrea ; 
 and at a moment when her undivided energies were 
 
CHAP. III.] PUBLIC LIFE AND SPEECHES. 75 
 
 needed to save Olynthus, she had a double war on 
 her hands. ^ The prospect was alarming, and Demos- 
 thenes' policy concerning the Theoricon was for the 
 moment accepted by the people. On the motion of 
 ApoUodorus it was resolved that the surplus revenue 
 should go to war purposes ; but the measure was 
 presently reversed, and its author prosecuted and 
 found guilty. 
 
 In the spring of 348 B.C., Philip, who had been 
 temporarily called away to quell a rising in Thessaly, 
 was opening a second campaign against Chalcidice. 
 One by one the allied cities fell before him ; some 
 yielded to his arms, the gates of others opened to 
 his gold. He advanced within a few miles of Olyn- 
 thus, curtly telling the inhabitants that either they 
 must quit Olynthus, or he Macedon. Already a small 
 body of Athenian cavalry had been sent on from 
 Euboea to Olynthus. A last and pressing appeal for 
 aid now came. The Athenians despatched a con- 
 siderable force of citizens, not of mercenaries ; but 
 the north wind was contrary, and before the succou r 
 could arriv e, O lynthus, afte r n gallnpt r\pff?-nrp^ InH 
 . fallen. Philip determined to leave here a signal 
 record of his vengeance. Olynthus and her thirty- 
 two confederate towns were levelled to the ground ; 
 her 10,000 inhabitants were sold into slavery. A 
 traveller in those regions, says Demosthenes seven 
 years later, could not even have traced the site of 
 cities (/%//. hi. § 26). No act of Philip's life gave 
 a greater shock to Greek feeling- Whether from policy 
 or from temperament, Philip was, as a .rule, a mag- 
 nanimous enemy; even the prejudices of Greeks he 
 was careful not to wound. It is true that Olynthus 
 was a revolted ally, and that Greek history afforded 
 cruel precedents in such cases, yet these precedents 
 hardly applied to a prince who was still a foreigner 
 and outside the Hellenic world. The terror, how- 
 
76 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. hi. 
 
 ever, inspired by the act mastered all other feelings. 
 The moment was a decisive one for Greece. Men's 
 imaginations were overawed, and the perspective of 
 events was fatally disturbed. Philip followed up his 
 conquest by the use of arts in which he was skilled. 
 Amid great rejoicings he held the Olympic festival, 
 instituted in Macedon upon the Greek model Here 
 he made himself of easy access to all. Some thought 
 it their wisdom to come to a timely understanding 
 with the conqueror, and were soon captivated by his 
 gracious advances. They brought back with them 
 to their several homes a taint, which became a spread- 
 ing corruption throughout Greece. Others watched 
 events at a distance with a wavering loyalty and 
 enfeebled courage. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 HIS PUBLIC LIFE AND SPEECHES. FROM THE FALL OF 
 OLYNTHIIS-TO THE PEACE OF PHILOCRATES (346 B.C.) 
 
 The Euboean war of 3 48 b.c. gave rise to an unpleasant 
 incident in Demosthenes' life. A certain Midias, of 
 whose insolent and vulgar opulence we have a vivid 
 picture, had an old feud with Demosthenes, dating 
 from the time of the suit against Aphobus. An award 
 had then gone against him. He had already taken 
 vengeance on the arbitrator by procuring his disen- 
 franchisement, and had watched his opportunity against 
 Demosthenes. The Eubcean war, which was strenu- 
 ously opposed by Demosthenes, was supported by 
 Eubulus and his adherents, including Midias. Thus 
 party differences came in to inflame personal dislike. 
 It so happened that Demosthenes had undertaken to 
 furnish the chorus for his tribe at the Great Dionysia 
 in 348 B.C. jMidias, with malignant pertinacity, took 
 every means to spoil the performance ; he even tried 
 to tamper beforehand with the judicial award. On 
 the day of the performance he struck Demosthenes 
 in the face before the whole theatre. Demosthenes 
 laid a Probole, or preliminary complaint, before the 
 people, and a vote was passed declaring Midias to be 
 guilty of contempt of the festival {ddcKdv Trepl rrjv 
 eopri^v). The vote by itself carried no legal sanction ; 
 
78 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. iv. 
 
 it remained to be confirmed by a tribunal. Demos- 
 thenes, rejecting all offers of compromise, carried to 
 its last stage the procedure of the Probole, under 
 which the extreme penalty of the law, extending to 
 death or confiscation, might be enforced. The peculiar 
 features of the outrage were that it was committed 
 against an official personage, and at a religious solem- 
 nity ; and these are the points that Demosthenes 
 presses home. 
 
 The speech Against Midias has received both 
 in ancient and modern times an admiration which it 
 is difficult fully to share. Lord Brougham goes so 
 far as to say that it " excels in spirit and vehemence 
 perhaps all his other efforts." There is, no doubt, in 
 it a genuine and fiery indignation ; both in its strength 
 and in its weakness, it is an admirable example of 
 ancient invective. The pathos, which in Demosthenes 
 is commonly disguised or subdued, is here prominent. 
 All the figures of rhetoric can be illustrated from tlie 
 speech ; the diction itself has often a poetic cast, be- 
 traying strong emotion. Demosthenes has invested 
 the subject with such dignity as it admits of Each 
 of the main divisions of the speech is wrought up 
 into a kind of peroration, in which the wider aspects 
 of the outrage are presented. But a " box on the 
 ear" cannot even by genius be elevated into the 
 higher order of ideas ; the very solemnity of the 
 scene at which it occurred makes the effect a tritle 
 ludicrous. A stinging sense too of personal wrong 
 is often dominant in the speech, and class jealousies, 
 which in his public life Demosthenes strove to allay, 
 are appealed to in a tone which recalls a tribunician 
 harangue in early Roman history. But lighter touches 
 are not wanting. The description, for instance, of 
 Midias himself is amusing. Elected to a cavalry com- 
 mand on the strength of his riches, so stingy was he 
 that he paraded on a borrowed horse, which, however, 
 
CHAP. IV.] PUBLIC LIFE AND SPEECHES. 79 
 
 he could hardly sit in a procession through the market- 
 place (§§ 1 71-174). The one public burden he in- 
 curred was a trierarchy ; or rather it was a desertion 
 and a speculation disguised as a trierarchy (§§ 166- 
 7). "Where then are his brilliant doings? Where 
 are his official services, his splendid outlays ? For 
 myself I cannot see, unless it be in this — that he has 
 built a mansion at Eleusis large enough to darken 
 all the neighbourhood — that he keeps a pair of white 
 horses from Sicyon, with which he conducts his wife 
 to the mysteries or anywhere else he fancies — that he 
 sweeps through the market-place with three or four 
 lackeys all to himself, and talks about his bowls, and 
 drinking horns, and saucers, loud enough to be heard 
 by the passers-by" (§ 158). But there are also pass- 
 ages of calm and grave eloquence. There is one 
 such in the peroration : " Just ask yourselves and seek 
 what it is that makes you who are jurors for the time 
 being the supreme power in the state, whether the 
 number empanelled be two hundred, a thousand, or 
 what not. It is not, you will find, that you, un- 
 like the rest of the community, are marshalled in arms, 
 that yours is the best bone and muscle, that you 
 are in the first bloom of youth. Nothing of the kind. 
 It is owing to the strength of the laws. And what is 
 the strength of the laws ? If any one of you is injured 
 and cries for aid, will they run up and lend help ? 
 No ; they are dead letters and nothing more. This 
 they cannot do. Where then lies their power? In 
 their being enforced by you, in their being made always 
 valid for all who need them. Thus the laws are strong 
 through you, and you through the laws. You are 
 bound, therefore, to defend them as you would your- 
 selves against wrong, to regard all injuries done to 
 the laws, whosoever the author prove to be, as injuries 
 to the community. No public services, no pathetic 
 appeals, no personal influence, no device of art, must 
 
So DEMOSTHENES. [chap. iv. 
 
 avail to shield the transgressor of the laws from paying 
 the penalty" (§§ 223-225) 
 
 Apart from the blemishes inherent in the subject 
 matter of the speech, there remain marks of incomplete 
 revision. These are explained by a statement occur- 
 ring first in Aeschines {Ciesi/'/ton, § 52), which is left 
 uncontradicted by Demosthenes, and is repeated by 
 Plutarch and others, that Demosthenes in the end 
 compromised the suit for half a talent It was not 
 the half-talent, we may be sure, that tempted him to 
 forego his revenge. Such was not the temper he 
 showed in the long suit with his guardians, or in the 
 earher stages of this very aftair. It has been plausibly 
 suggested that he dropped the case in obedience to 
 political motives. At the end of the year in which 
 this speech was written (347 B.C.), he is found acting 
 in conjunction with the party of Eubulus, as one of 
 the embassy sent to negotiate peace with Philip. To 
 this new connection he may have sacrified some per- 
 sonal feelings. But this leads us back, to the main 
 thread of the history. 
 
 The fall of Olynthus in 3 48 n.c produced a sudden 
 change of front in the policy of Eubulus. Embassies 
 were sent in all quarters to unite the Greeks in a 
 national war. This is the first occasion on which 
 Aeschines comes much into notice. He had been in 
 turn an usher in his father's school, a tragic actor, 
 and a clerk in the Assembly. His brilliant and versa- 
 tile gifts opened for him a way into public life, and 
 here he became a follower of Eubulus. He now 
 undertook a mission to Arcadia. At a meeting in 
 Megalopolis he inveighed against the traitors who had 
 sold their countn,-, and denounced Philip as " a blood- 
 guilty barbarian " {liapfiapov t( Kal akda-ropa, Dem. 
 £//i!>. § 305). It was not long since that Megalopolis 
 had received a cold rebuff from Athens (352 B.C. p. 41), 
 and the summons to arms naturally met here with 
 
CHAP. IV.] PUBLIC LIFE AND SPEECHES. 8i 
 
 no response. But other states paid as little heed. 
 Intent on their local quarrels they looked to the 
 mediation of Philip with hope rather than fear. 
 
 This failure to bring Greece into union with Athens 
 left only one course open. Demosthenes and all 
 other thoughtful men saw that after a war of unbroken 
 disaster some breathing-space was needed. Even 
 before the taking of Olynthus, Philip had indirectly 
 informed the Athenians that he was prepared to treat 
 with them. The subsequent capture of Athenian 
 citizens in Olynthus produced a profound impression, 
 and informal negotiations were set on foot for their 
 release. About the same time (347 B.C.), Thebes 
 had appealed to Philip against the Phocians, and 
 envoys from Phocis reached Athens urgently beseech- 
 ing aid in holding Thermopyls. The Athenians, as 
 in 352 B.C., sent prompt succour. Phalsecus, the 
 Phocian general at the pass, refused, from suspicion or 
 jealousy, to admit the Athenian troops. To the Athe- 
 nians this conduct suggested painful doubts whether 
 Phalsecus might not have a secret understanding with 
 Philip. If so, it was one more argument in favour of 
 peace. Philip, on his side, was well disposed to listen 
 to overtures. It was an essential part of his scheme 
 to make an unopposed entrj'- into Greece. He meant 
 to march through Thermopylae as the champion of 
 the god. All the subsequent negotiations, all the 
 delusive assurances with which he entertained the 
 Athenians, were directed to this end, though he him- 
 self must have been surprised at the docility with 
 which the Athenian ambassadors lent themselves to 
 his plan. 
 
 The first official overtures came from Athens. 
 Philocrates proposed, and Eubulus seconded the 
 proposal, that ten ambassadors should be appointed 
 to treat for peace with Fhiltp (end or347 B.cf) The 
 envoys chosen included Philocrates, Demosthenes, 
 
 G 
 
82 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. iv. 
 
 and Aeschines. The passage of history on which we 
 now enter is in many respects exceedingly obscure. 
 We are almost wholly dependent on assertions made 
 by Demosthenes and Aeschines, and these assertions 
 often are not merely inconsistent with one another, 
 but self-contradictory. Our main sources of informa- 
 tion are the speeches delivered, three years after the 
 events, by Demosthenes and Aeschines, On the 
 Embassy^ and those delivered by the same orators, 
 sixteen years after the events, in the trial On the 
 Crcnvn. The speech of Demosthenes On the Peace 
 (346 B.C.), and that of Aeschines A^^ainst Timarchus 
 (345 B.c), are incidentally valuable. It may be 
 observed that the further the speeches are removed 
 from the events, the more reckless are their statements ; 
 and it is peculiarly unfortunate that we derive almost 
 all our knowledge from forensic speeches, which by a 
 recognised Greek practice abound in misrepresenta- 
 tion. Further, it appears that Aeschines is more 
 hopelessly at variance with himself than Demosthenes. 
 But both orators are anxious to disclaim, as much as 
 possible, their part in a peace, which, with its author, 
 soon became greatly discredited. Only where their 
 testimony concurs or does not conflict can we feel 
 ourselves on any sure ground. 
 
 A detailed account of the first embassy is found 
 only in Aeschines, and has rather the value of anec- 
 dote than of political historj'. He tells of the surly 
 and suspicious manners of Demosthenes on the 
 journey ; of his insolent belief in his own eloquence, 
 how he boasted that he had " exhaustless sjirings of 
 argument" ready, and would "stop Philips mouth 
 with a good sound cart-rope" (Aesch. Einb. § 21). 
 Then how in the audience-chamber at Pella he 
 completely lost his presence of mind, and after an 
 obscure preamble broke down. In pointed contrast 
 with this failure, Aeschines complacently records his 
 
CHAP. IV.] PUBLIC LIFE AND SPEECHES. 83 
 
 own speech, enforced by proofs drawn from mythical 
 no less than from recent history, and clearly establish- 
 ing the title of Athens to Amphipolis. As a states- 
 man, Aeschines is more damaged by this speech, on 
 which he prided himself, than he would have been by 
 a failure, such as that which he ascribes (and probably 
 with truth) to his rival. Philip must have smiled at 
 the cogency of his argument as addressed to a 
 victorious belligerent. On the way home — if we 
 may believe Aeschines — Demosthenes occupied him- 
 self partly in binding his colleagues to keep silence 
 about the fiasco at Pella, partly in laying traps for 
 them by means of puerile challenges to repeat before 
 the Assembly their praises of Philip. The_ envoys 
 brought ba ck a letter f r om Philip ( March 346 B.a), 
 wl-nrh l-hpy present ed tothe rniinri1._ The letter was 
 distinctive of its author. " He intended to do them 
 great services, which he would have stated more 
 explicitly had he been sure of obtaining alliance as 
 well as peace" (Dem. E^nb. § 40). The actual terms, 
 however, were merely a recognition of the status quo, 
 that each side should keep what at the time they 
 possessed. 
 
 The matter was debated at Assemblies held on 
 the 1 8th and 19th of Elaphebolion (March). Two 
 main points had to be determined. The first related 
 to Philip's conquests — was he to keep them all? 
 Here there could be little doubt ; the very basis of 
 the peace was the status quo, and, indeed, after a war 
 of nine years, in which all the losses had been on one 
 side, no other terms could have been looked for. 
 The second point was the vital one. Who were to 
 be included in the peace ? The motion proposed by 
 Philocrates, who had, doubtless, received his instruc- 
 tions from Philip, was that peace and alliance should 
 be concluded between Philip and his allies on the 
 one part, and Athens and her allies on the other; 
 
84 DEMOSTHENES. [chap, iv 
 
 but two allies of Athens were expressly excluded, the 
 Phocians and the town of Halus in Thessaly. This 
 proposal seems to have been supported in its entirety 
 by Aeschines ; Demosthenes supported it, with the 
 exception of the disastrous clause excluding the 
 Phocians and Halus. The Assembly resolved to 
 strike out this clause, thus implicitly including Phocis 
 and Halus in the list of allies. But, as it turned out, 
 this availed nothing.-' At the Assembly held si.x days 
 later, for the purpose of administering the oaths 
 to the Athenians and their allies, the Macedonian 
 plenipotentiaries refused to admit the Phocians as 
 Athenian allies. To have yielded here would have 
 been to surrender the cardinal point on which Philip's 
 calculations turned. If peace were made with the 
 Phocians, the plea for his armed inter\-ention in 
 Phocis would be gone. On the other hand, the 
 Athenians were no less deeply interested in maintain- 
 ing alliance with those who held Thermopyloe, the 
 key of Northern Greece. It was a hard dilemma 
 for the Assembly. Philocrates and Aeschines now 
 became the interpreters of Philip's intentions, and 
 took on them to reassure the people. The king's 
 enigmatical letter received from them a definite con- 
 struction. He was unable, they said, at present to 
 regard the Phocians as allies owing to his relations 
 with Thebes. But once the treaty was concluded he 
 would be the friend of Athens, he would protect the 
 Phocians, humble Thebes, and restore to Athens 
 Euboea and Oropus. These audacious promises, 
 made by envoys who had had direct dealings with 
 Philip, fell on credulous ears. Worse instincts were 
 also satisfied, for hatred of Thebes was still among 
 the governing motives of Athenian policy. The 
 oaths of ratification were accordingly taken, and 
 the name of the Phocians was omitted. Though 
 Demosthenes had opposed the original exclusion 
 
CHAP. IV.] FUBLIC LIFE AND SPEECHES. 85 
 
 of the Phocians from the treaty, we do not learn that 
 he here entered a patriotic protest. On a later 
 occasion when he exposed these same delusions, he 
 could not get a hearing ; probably he could not have 
 got one now. Yet his silence is to be regretted. 
 The idle hopes now excited continued to be worked 
 upon till Philip was inside Thermopylce. 
 
 It remained t o receive the oaths of ratification from 
 Phili p a] id ^'^ oiiip<^, A second embassy, compose d 
 of t he same members as'TEe first , w as appointed fe r 
 the purpose . The peace was to date from the ratifi- 
 cation of the treaty. It was to be feared that Philip 
 would reckon not from the day that the oaths were 
 administered at Athens, but from the day that they 
 were administered to himself. All that he could 
 secure in the interval he would look on as the fair 
 prize of war. Demosthenes, therefore, did what he 
 could to hasten the departure of the ambassadors. 
 They lingered ten days in Athens, and then journeyed 
 forward leisurely to Macedon. At Pella they 
 awaited Philip's return from Thrace, in spite of in- 
 structions to repair to wherever Philip happened to be. 
 It was now fifty days since they had left Athens, and 
 meantime Philip had pushed his conquests in Thrace, 
 and reduced to submission Cerspbleptes, an Athenian 
 ally. Precious time had been wasted, and the Cherso- 
 nese had been daily more imperilled. On his arrival 
 at .Pella, Phili p took the oaths himself, but nothmg 
 was yet done about his allies. Ambassadors from 
 the chief states of Greece were now at Philip's court, 
 each seeking to forestall his favour. Philip was per- 
 fectly affable to all, but wrapped his designs in pro- 
 found mystery. While making no definite promises, 
 he allowed vague and contradictory reports to circu- 
 late. The hopes of all were kept alive to the last, 
 and joint action was precluded. In his progress 
 southwards at the head of an army, he was still ac- 
 
86 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. iv. 
 
 companied by a crew of bickering envoys. He 
 specially invited the Athenian ambassadors to mediate 
 between Halus and Pharsalus — a new pretext for 
 bringing him nearer to his goal without raising an 
 alarm. Demosthenes became more and more uneasy 
 at tlie position of affairs. He wrote a despatch home, 
 he says, but his colleagues objected to it, and sent 
 their own version in its place. He resolved to take 
 news in person, but here again he was hindered; At 
 Pheroe in Thessaly the oaths were at last administered 
 to Philip's allies, and the Phocians at the same time 
 were expressly excluded from the treaty. The Athe- 
 nian envoys arrived at Athens on the 13th of Sciro- 
 ])horion (June), after an absence of seventy days. 
 When they left Philip he was three days' march from 
 Thermopylae. 
 
 Demosthenes, on his return, instantly laid his re- 
 port before the Council. He exposed the impostures 
 practised during the past months, and accused 
 Aeschines and others of traitorous concert with 
 Philip. He implored them still to save Phocis and 
 Thermopylae. Moved by his earnestness, the Council 
 withheld the usual vote of thanks from the ambassa- 
 dors. But in the Assembly held a few days later, 
 another spirit prevailed. Aeschines assured the 
 people that they need only keep quiet, and in a few 
 days everything would turn out as they wished. 
 Thebes, not Phocis, was Philip's real enemy, as would 
 be seen by the event. Eubcea was to be given up to 
 Athens in compensation for Amphipolis, and there 
 was more in rcsen'e — a hint at the restoration of 
 Oropus. It was the old mystification again. A letter 
 from Philip was also read, in which he apologised for 
 the delay of the embassy, and took the blame upon 
 himself. He conveyed general assurances of his good 
 will, but that was all. Demosthenes rose, and declared 
 that he knew nothing of the promises held out by 
 
CHAP. IV.] PUBLIC LIFE AND SPEECHES. 87 
 
 Aeschines, and did not believe in them ; but he was 
 hooted down. Philocrates observed that it was no 
 wonder that he and Demosthenes were not of the 
 same mind ; Demosthenes was a water-drinker, and 
 he hked his wine ; and the people laughed. The 
 vagueness of Philip's letter was made up for by the 
 lucid commentary of Aeschines, who explained that 
 the king's diplomacy was necessarily secret, and re- 
 quired confidential interpreters. On the motion of 
 Philocrates, it was carried that, unless the Phocians 
 surrendered the temple to the Amphictyons, Athens 
 would compel them by force of arms. There were 
 Phocians present at this act of betrayal. Up to this 
 moment the Phocians had probably shared the pre- 
 valent illusions. They, too, had been led to believe 
 that Philip's menacing attitude tow^ards them was 
 designed to veil hostile purposes against Thebes. In 
 any case, they thought Athens could not but stand 
 by them at the last. The present decree, however, 
 was unambiguous, and disarmed resistance. On the 
 23d of Scirophorion, seven days from the passing of 
 the decree, Phalsecus made his own terms with Philip, 
 who thus, without striking a blow, became master of 
 Thermopylse. 
 
 The Athenians had despatched a third embassy to 
 present the decree of Philocrates to Philip. This time 
 Demosthenes solemnly declined to act Aeschines 
 also remained at home on the score of illness. But 
 before the embassy had executed their commission, 
 they were met by the news of the convention with 
 Phalsecus. In the first transport of grief and disap- 
 pointment, the Athenians carried resolutions for the 
 defence of the city. Philip forthwith summoned the 
 Amphictyonic Council to pass judgment on the 
 guilty Phocians. The machinery was somewhat anti- 
 quated, and the states now represented in the Council 
 were bitter enemies of Phocis ; still it was venerable 
 
88 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. iv. 
 
 from old association, and might give a colour to high- 
 handed usurpation. The doom inflicted on Phocis 
 was that it should cease to be a state. Twenty-two 
 Phocian towns were dismantled; the inhabitants were 
 dispersed into villages, deprived of their arms and 
 horses, and subjected to a crushing tribute. The 
 seat and votes of the Phocians in the Amphictyonic 
 Council were forfeited to Philip, and the right of 
 precedence in consulting the oracle was transferred 
 from Athens to him. He was further chosen to pre- 
 side at the celebration of the Pythian games (Aug. 
 346), to which, however, the Athenians refused to 
 send their representative. Such was the end of the 
 Sacred War, carried on now for ten years. Philip 
 had attained the object which he had long pursued, 
 by patience and diplomacy no less than by the active 
 energies of genius. He had received admission into 
 the Greek commonwealth at the religious centre of 
 Greece. 
 
 But Athens still held aloof, and he could not dis- 
 pense with her recognition. An embassy came to 
 demand it. Popular indignation was roused, and the 
 patriot party urged an unconditional refusal. Demos- 
 thenes, as once before at a less critical moment 
 (p. 36), brought the counsels of prudence to bear 
 on a heated assembly. The speech he delivered 
 toward the end of 346 B.c, is known as the Speech 
 On the Peace. He rebukes the Athenian habit of 
 reflecting after the event. He reminds his hearers 
 of three distinct occasions on which it would have 
 been well had they taken his advice — at the time of 
 the last Eubcean war, at the opening of the peace 
 negotiations, and in the recent debates after the return 
 of the second embassy. He claims no special pre- 
 science, but merely a pure and unbiassed judgment. 
 He then proceeds to the subject in hand. The peace 
 was, indeed, unworthy of Athens, but having been 
 
CHAP. IV.] PUBLIC LIFE AND SPEECHES. 89 
 
 made, it must not be broken. Everything must be 
 avoided Avhich would give the self-styled Amphictyons 
 a pretext for combining against Athens. Many 
 states of Greece had grudges against her of their own, 
 and in the name of Amphictyonic union might push 
 their hostility to more desperate conclusions than if 
 they were acting singly. The Social War had proved 
 how discordant ambitions might unite to produce 
 unforeseen results. Without sacrificing honour, the 
 Athenians must avoid imprudent action. Already 
 they had acquiesced in the loss of Oropus, Amphi- 
 polis, Cardia, Chios, Cos, and Rhodes, in order to 
 ensure a balance of advantage ; would it not be sheer 
 folly to go to war with a whole confederacy for " the 
 shadow of Delphi ?" 
 
 This speech is the first of the second group (p. 61) 
 of Philippic orations. It is brief and unimpassioned, 
 containing merely a sober view of a difificult situation ; 
 and the expression remains on a level with the 
 thought. The advice contained is sternly practical, 
 and bitter alike to the speaker and the hearers. It 
 has in it none of the higher inspirations of genius. 
 By a strange exception to the Attic practice, the 
 language of emotion hardly appears except in the 
 concluding words. The cautious wisdom of Demos- 
 thenes in avoiding an occasion for an Amphictyonic 
 war was fully justified by subsequent history \ for the 
 present, however, the danger was averted. It is to 
 be regretted that three years later, in his speech 
 On the Embassy (§§ 111-113), Demosthenes, in his 
 anxiety to sever himself completely from Aeschines 
 and his policy, is led to deny his own share in these 
 transactions. But, widely unlike as were the two men's 
 motives, the substance of their advice on this question 
 cannot have differed sensibly. Each of them recom- 
 mended the recognition of Philip's Amphictyonic 
 title. Demosthenes grounds his advice on the par- 
 
90 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. iv. 
 
 amount needs of the moment, and he throws out 
 hints to show that he has no sympathy with the 
 Philippising party. In peace upon such terms he 
 saw an armistice rather than a durable settlement, 
 and the next few years were a time of preparation 
 for the decisive stru^crle. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 HIS PUBLIC LIFE AND SPEECHES. FROM THE PEACE 
 OF PHILOCRATES (346 B.C.) TO CH^ERONEA (338 B.C.) 
 
 During the years of nominal peace from 346 B.C. to 
 340 B.C., Philip carried on a diplomatic warfare, 
 without ever coming to an open rupture. Larger 
 horizons had, doubtless, already opened up to him 
 outside Greece. He aspired to the leadership of the 
 Hellenes in a war against Persia, but the temper of 
 Athens stood in his way. Philip was not one who 
 regarded moral forces as material obstacles which 
 might rudely be set aside. Any attempt to treat 
 Athens hke Olynthus, and to violate the home and 
 centre of Greek life, might arm against him a con- 
 federation of all the powers. He must if possible 
 bring Athens to act with them, or at least not to act 
 against him. Hence the terms of studied courtesy 
 in which he addresses the Athenian people, his 
 laboured apologies, his indignant disavowals of the 
 very purpose on which he is engaged (all reminding 
 us forcibly of the methods of Napoleon I.), his hints 
 at enigmatic services which he has no intention of 
 performing. Of those who gave credence and cur- 
 rency to these friendly professions, some were honest 
 dupes. Isocrates, in 346 B.C., in the interval between 
 the conclusion of the peace and the end of the Sacred 
 War, speaks of ill-natured persons who pretended that 
 
92 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. v. 
 
 Philip had designs against the freedom of Greece, 
 and he is almost ashamed to notice the groundless 
 suspicion {Phili/>p. § 73). The destruction of Phocis 
 was Philip's practical comment on these remarks. 
 But the faith of Isocrates remained unshaken, and a 
 letter he wrote to Philip, probably in 342 rc, is con- 
 ceived in the old strain. Philip continued to work 
 out his ends by arts of his owa He kept the peace, 
 but sought to isolate Athens by forming fresh alliances 
 in every quarter. Demosthenes followed and thwarted 
 each movement His influence steadily grew ; he 
 was no longer an opposition speaker, he had become 
 a recognised adviser and a leader of opinion. Round 
 him gathered a patriot party, embracing in its ranks 
 Hegesippus, Lycurgus, and Hyperides. But each 
 step in advance was sharply contested and painfully 
 won ; and Eubulus, though his power was on the 
 wane, still retained the control of finance. From 
 such hands Demosthenes determined to wrest the 
 administratioa Conscious that a decisive struggle 
 was imminent, he strove to impress his own convic- 
 tion on others, and to prepare a national resistance. 
 His leading thought during this period was to organise 
 an Hellenic league against the usurper, to bring 
 Greece into co-operation with Athens. The speeches 
 beginning with the speech On the Peace (346 b.c.) 
 down to the Third Philippic {-^^i n.c), form a gradu- 
 ated series in which this idea is developed with 
 increasing clearness and emphasis. 
 
 To the Peloponnesian states the first call was ad- 
 dressed. Philip, who had retired for a time from the 
 scene of Greek politics to consolidate his power at 
 home, reappeared in 344 B.C., and established an olig- 
 archical regime in Thessaly. In the same year he 
 interfered in the Peloponnese, where he aspired to play 
 the part of Epaminondas in supporting the independ- 
 ence of Mcssene and Argos against Sparta. The reality 
 
CHAP, v.] PUBLIC LIFE AND SPEECHES. 93 
 
 of his friendship was proved by subsidies of men and 
 money. On the proposal of Demosthenes an em- 
 bassy was sent, of which he himself was the chief 
 member, to counteract these intrigues. He visited 
 Messene and Argos ; he pointed to Olynthus and 
 Thessaly as warning instances of states which Philip 
 by presents and promises had lured to their ruin. 
 They had known, he said, Philip the benefactor ; let 
 them pray that they might never know Philip the 
 deceiver. " Manifold are the contrivances of art for 
 the defence and security of cities — battlements, walls, 
 trenches, and the like — all made by human hands and 
 costly to maintain. But there is one universal safe- 
 guard, planted deep in the hearts of thinking men, 
 a safeguard which is good and salutary for all, and 
 especially for free communities against despots. What 
 is this ? Mistrust. Guard this, hold it fast ; if you 
 keep it, you may rest assured no harm will come to 
 you. What is the object you seek ? Liberty. And 
 do you not see that Philip's very titles are irrecon- 
 cilable with liberty ? Every monarch and despot is a 
 foe of freedom, and hostile to law. Beware then, lest 
 in seeking deliverance from war, you find a master !" 
 {Phil. ii. §§ 23-25). 
 
 This mission to the Peloponnese was the origin, 
 apparently, of an embassy sent to Athens in ;'44 B.C., 
 on which occasion Demosthenes spoke the Second 
 Philippic. The draft of a reply to the envoys was 
 embodied in the speech, but the loss of this document 
 leaves us to conjecture the precise situation. The 
 speech taken alone would seem to be primarily an 
 answer to Philip's remonstrances against the miscon- 
 struction put upon his conduct by the Athenians. 
 But in any case its scope is far wider than the diplo- 
 matic issue of the moment. Demosthenes exhibits 
 here the true relation of Philip to Athens and to 
 Greece. The introduction reads like a preface to a 
 
94 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. v. 
 
 warlike proposal, but no such proposal follows. The 
 speech is preparatory to action, not a summons to 
 act ; its aim is to enlighten and convince rather than 
 to exhort The style, though animated, is not marked 
 by any passionate vehemence ; only towards the end 
 (§ 33) ^ clearer vision of his countr)''s danger is borne in 
 upon the orator, and his language reflects his emotion. 
 He begins by a sarcastic remark on the means 
 taken to check Philip's progress ; the Athenians talk 
 while Philip acts, and each side succeeds best in their 
 own line. Unless, then, the people are satisfied with 
 such empty triumphs, they must alter their whole 
 method (§§ 1-5). He then combats the easy faith 
 with which the assurances of Macedonian partizans 
 are accepted. Against Athens, he says, all Philip's 
 efforts are aimed. His friendship for Thebes, for 
 Argos, for Messene, betrays his motives. He is ac- 
 quainted with the inglorious past of those cities, and 
 with the traditions of your history. He does not 
 tempt you into his alliance. " This is the noblest of 
 all tributes to your character. You are thus pro- 
 nounced to be the only people who could never be 
 bribed to abandon the common rights of Greece, who 
 never for favour or profit would barter away your 
 Hellenic loyalty" {§§ 7-12). He next refutes the 
 apologies offered for Philip. He points to the incon- 
 sistency between his promised policy in the Pelopon- 
 nese and his actual policy in Bceotia — he who sub- 
 jected the Boeotian cities to Thebes, will he free the 
 Peloponnesian cities from Sparta ? He shows how 
 Philip, by a necessity of his position, was pursuing a 
 settled plan of hostility to Athens (§§ 13-19). This 
 he enforces by a summary of the arguments he had 
 used in his mission to the Peloponnese. Argives and 
 Messenians, it appeared, still remained deaf to wise 
 counsel ; Athenians had a clearer insight, and neglect 
 on their part would be without e.\cuse (§§ 20-27). 
 
CHAP, v.] PUBLIC LIFE AND SPEECHES. 95 
 
 Having submitted his proposed reply to the en- 
 voys, he points in the epilogue (§§ 28-37), riot by 
 name, but still unmistakably, to Philocrates and 
 Aeschines as the guilty causes of the present troubles. 
 Their promises had deceived the people ; let not the 
 innocent hereafter suffer in their stead. " Believe me 
 the day will come when Philip's doings will pain you 
 more than they do now. I see things marching to 
 their end ; and though I have no wish to be a true 
 prophet, yet I fear the evil is but too nigh already. 
 When, then, it shall no longer be in your power to dis- 
 regard events, when you shall no longer hear from me 
 or from another that it is you who are menaced, but 
 when you all see it with your own eyes, and know it for 
 yourselves, you will probably yield to angry and bitter 
 feelings. And as your ambassadors have kept from 
 you the guilty secret of their own bribed services, 
 those who endeavour to repair what through them 
 has been lost may become, I fear, the victims of your 
 displeasure. . . . While the storm then is still coming, 
 still gathering, while we still hear one another's voices, 
 I would remind each of you of what you know full 
 well — who it was persuaded you to abandon Phocis, 
 and made you to give up Thermopylse (and ever since 
 Philip commands these places he commands the road 
 to Attica and to the Peloponnese) — who has caused 
 you to take counsel, not about your rights or your 
 foreign policy, but about your home possessions, and 
 about war upon Attica, a war whose smart each one 
 will feel only when it comes, but whose beginning dates 
 back to that day. . . . Enough has now been said to 
 waken recollection. That my words should be fully 
 verified, grant, all ye gods, that it may never come to 
 this ! For myself, I could wish no man to suffer even 
 a merited doom at the cost of danger and damage to 
 the community" (§§ 32-37). 
 
 The anti-Macedonian party were soon emboldened 
 
96 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. v. 
 
 to begin the judicial proceedings hinted at in the 
 Second Philippic. In 343 B.C. Hyperides impeached 
 Philocrates, who retired into exile, and in his absence 
 was condemned to death. About the same time 
 Demosthenes resumed an accusation, which three 
 years before he had laid against Aeschines, for mis- 
 conduct on the second embassy. The charge was a 
 delicate one for him to maintain, for it was only a 
 narrow line that had separated his own advice from 
 that of Aeschines at one period of the nc^'otiations 
 (p. 84). Hence in the speech On the Embassy he 
 carefully limits the charge ; Aeschines, he says, is not 
 accused of having concluded peace, but of having 
 concluded a shameful and ruinous peace. Techni- 
 cally the prosecution related only to the second 
 embassy, but the previous part taken by Aeschines 
 in framing the terms of the treaty is incidentally 
 attacked. Demosthenes, however, in attempting to 
 disclaim all responsibility for a peace which was now 
 discredited, becomes fiercely polemical, and is led 
 into many disingenuous, and some false, statements. 
 His case is, moreover, complicated by the nature of 
 the evidence available. He can bring no direct 
 proof of Aeschines' guilt. The presumption of guilt 
 rested on an inference derived from the conduct of 
 Aeschines at different moments. The facts had, 
 therefore, to be so marshalled as most forcibly to 
 suggest the inference. Hence the peculiar disposi- 
 tion of the speech. While Aeschines follows the 
 historical order of events, Demosthenes inverts that 
 order. Each aims at producing an impression of 
 honest artlessness, Aeschines by a straightforward 
 and continuous narrative, Demosthenes by a would- 
 be haphazard arrangement. Aeschines manages to 
 ignore or evade the real issues by lingering over 
 transactions which were not impugned, and by repelling 
 at leuLith collateral charges. The seeming artless- 
 
ciiAr. v.] PUBLIC LIFE AND SPEECHES. 97 
 
 ness of Demosthenes is one of the artifices he often 
 employs to mask the weak points of a case. Some 
 arxient as well as modern critics have seen in the 
 absence of regular order a want of plan. But the 
 orator in truth shows an exact appreciation of the 
 materials at his command, and of their value as evi- 
 dence. He has one capital and indisputable fact to 
 start from, that the pledges and promises of Aeschines 
 on his return from the second embassy mystified and 
 deceived the people, and that the result was the seizure 
 of Thermopylae and the destruction of Phocis. This is 
 the groundwork of his reasoning, and forms the chief 
 article of accusation. The point is developed at length 
 in §§ 29-97, and is elsewhere reiterated. But so far 
 Aeschines is not proved corrupt. Demosthenes marks 
 the possible alternative. Aeschines, he argues, must 
 either have been honestly deluded or have been in 
 guilty collusion with Philip. If the former, would he 
 not, after the event had falsified his hopes, have ab- 
 horred the man by whom he had been deceived? But 
 nothing of the kind ; he shared in Philip's rejoicings 
 at Delphi over the work of ruin, and since that time 
 he has aspired to the friendship and advocated the 
 cause of the conqueror. Such conduct can only be 
 accounted for by corruption. This is the topic 
 handled from §§ 98-149. The argument is not easy 
 to meet, and Aeschines certainly fails to "rebut it. 
 I'he same conclusion had been previously arrived at 
 from another side. The abrupt conversion of Aes- 
 chines from an ardent patriot, rousing Greece to a 
 war against the foreigner, into a servile partisan, was 
 capable only of one explanation (§§ 9-28). 
 
 Having established this strong presumption against 
 Aeschines, he goes back upon the events of the second 
 embassy itself. He exposes the fatal delay of the 
 ambassadors, and their neglect of instructions (§§ 
 150-178). By relating the events in this connection 
 
 H 
 
98 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. v. 
 
 he is making up for the want of direct evidence ; a 
 treasonable colour is given to proceedings which might 
 have been more leniently interpreted. 
 
 Here the first great division of the speech ends. 
 The main position has now been made good ; the rest 
 is supplementary and corroborative, and may roughly 
 be called the Epilogue (§§ 179-343). The first divi- 
 sion of the speech is more distinctively forensic in 
 character ; the charges are formally stated, and the 
 proofs adduced. The second half is rather in the 
 deliberative manner. The range of topics is enlarged, 
 principles are set forth, and a wider political outlook 
 is taken. The special case of Aeschines is, in a pass- 
 age of indignant eloquence, merged in a general view 
 of the increase of traitors in Greece, and of the im- 
 punity accorded them (§§ 259-2S7). A powerful re- 
 capitulation (§§ 315-336) recalls to the jury the prime 
 indictment. 
 
 With all its force and ingenuity the speech is of an 
 unwieldy length, and sufiers from excessive repeti- 
 tions. Other intrinsic weaknesses have been indicated 
 above. But the large and statesmanlike utterances 
 which are scattered through it, and which abound in 
 the latter half, atone for much that is ignobly personal 
 or disingenuous. The bold disregard of technical 
 rules of rhetoric claims some notice. Nowhere, un- 
 less in The Crown, are outward laws of symmetry so 
 completely set aside in favour of a more subtle but 
 still a presiding order. Narrative and proof are 
 blended ; the events, displaced from their proper se- 
 quence, are so disposed, that in telling their own story 
 they suggest the desired inference. Refutation is not 
 kept distinct from proof or narrative. The exact point 
 at which tlie Epilogue begins may be variously fixed. 
 
 Erom the reply of Aeschines we can infer some- 
 thing as to the relation between the present form of 
 Demosthenes' speech and the form in which it was 
 
CH.vr. v.] PUBLIC LIFE AND SPEECHES. 99 
 
 delivered. The general structure must have been the 
 same, for Aeschines criticises its artificial order (Aesch. 
 Emb. § 96). And Aeschines' answers have, on the 
 whole, a minute correspondence with the objections 
 as we read them in Demosthenes. The discrepancies 
 are comparatively few, and of two kinds. Some con- 
 sist in slight variations of detail, such as are almost 
 always found between a speech quoted from memory 
 and the same speech as delivered. Others are more 
 important, and seem to imply that the version cited 
 by Aeschines was, in some respects at least, fuller 
 than ours. To take one instance, Aeschines quotes 
 (§ 10) a story and a comparison which are totally 
 absent from the extant speech. Whether the speech, 
 as we have it, was abbreviated by Demosthenes for 
 publication, or is an unrevised draft which was ex- 
 panded in delivery, is not so easy to determine. 
 
 The result of the trial was, as we learn on good 
 authority, that Aeschines was acquitted by thirty votes 
 — a doubtful victory, and probably due to the influ- 
 ence of Eubulus, whose dominion in the law courts is 
 in this very speech denounced. 
 
 In the years between 344 B.C. and 341 e.g., the 
 tide of events turned partially against Philip. He 
 sought to ally himself with other religious centres of 
 the Greek world besides Delphi. In Elis he found a 
 footing, which seemed to promise influence in Olyni- 
 pia. Another design, however, of supplanting Athens 
 as guardian of the sanctuary of Delos was frustrated. 
 His most important success was in Euboea ; there he 
 established his despots at Oreus and Eretria. But 
 both on the east and west he was foiled in the attempt 
 to gain access to the Peloponnese. First, Megara 
 was rescued by prompt succour from Athens. Bafiied 
 on this side, he turned his arms towards Epirus, and 
 intrigued in Aetolia. He marched upon the impor- 
 tant town of Ambracia, the possession of which would 
 
loo DEMOSTHENES. [chap, v 
 
 have opened up Acarnania and the Corinthian Gulf. 
 Here again the Athenians were beforehand ; they had 
 thrown a body of troops into Ambracia, and the way 
 to the south was closed. An embassy to Acarnania, 
 led by Demosthenes and backed up by Athenian arms, 
 was successful in forming a league in that quarter. 
 The danger of an invasion of Attica had for the pre- 
 sent receded. Philip, in 342 b.c, entered on a new 
 campaign against Thrace, and pushed further east- 
 wards ; a permanent conquest of the countr)- between 
 the Hellespont and the Euxine would serve him at 
 once as a base of operations against Asia and would 
 deal a vital blow to Athens. 
 
 In 341 B.C. Athens found herself menaced in her 
 most vulnerable point abroad. The Thracian Cher- 
 sonese had for about two centuries been regarded as 
 an integral part of Athenian territory, and was the 
 bulwark of her maritime empire in the north. If 
 Thermopylae held one gate of Greece, the Chersonese 
 might be said to hold the other. It commanded the 
 passage of the Dardanelles and the corn trade of the 
 Black Sex On its safety depended the very subsist- 
 ence of Athens, for from the Black Sea came almost 
 all the grain imported into Attica, amounting to about 
 one-third of the total consumption. 
 
 Diopeithes, an Athenian mercenary, had in 343 
 R.c. attempted to force some settlers upon Cardia, in 
 the Chersonese. Situated at the head of the isthmus 
 not far from the modern Gallipoli, Cardia held a posi- 
 tion of somewhat the same importance that Gallipoli 
 holds now. The city had in 357 rc. been recognised 
 as independent, and in the late treaty had been en- 
 rolled among the allies of Philip. But the Athenians 
 from long possession had not ceased to look on it as 
 their own. Philip sent aid to Cardia, and Diopeithes 
 retaliated by plundering districts of Thrace that were 
 subject to Macedon. This led to a letter of menace 
 
CHAP, v.] PUBLIC LIFE AND SPEECHES. loi 
 
 and remonstrance from Philip to the Athenian people. 
 His partisans in Athens pressed for the recall of 
 Diopeithes ; Demosthenes saw the necessity of keep- 
 ing a firm grasp on the Chersonese at a moment when 
 war was imminent, and resisted the demand. Tech- 
 nical right was on the side of Philip, for armed 
 violence towards Macedonian subjects or allies was 
 a violation of the peace. 
 
 In his speech On the Chersonese, Demosthenes 
 (341 B.C.) refuses to treat the question on a narrow 
 technical issue (cf his contemptuous phrase, § 57, 
 avTi] i) SiaSuiacria). He takes it out of the juridical 
 sphere into that of politics. His argument, morally 
 and politically valid, maintained that Athens, appa- 
 rently aggressive, was in a very real sense acting on the 
 defensive — that the peace existed only in name, and 
 that Philip had long been at war, though war had not 
 been declared. A permanent force, consisting in part 
 of the troops of Diopeithes, must, he said, be kept in 
 the neighbourhood of the Hellespont — a recommend- 
 ation which he had in substance urged already in the 
 Mrsf Philippic (351 B.C.) 
 
 Such is the essential and recurrent thought of the 
 speech On the Chersonese^ the most perfect, perhaps, 
 of all the deliberative harangues of Demosthenes. 
 It has in it almost every variety of tone. From a 
 subdued sarcasm it rises into fiery scorn and passion- 
 ate invective. He abases his audience by the picture 
 of their lower selves, but presently reanimates them 
 by the image of austere devotion which the ideal 
 Athens presents. Three main topics find place in the 
 speech ; but they pass imperceptibly into one another, 
 in the Demosthenic manner, without the marks of a 
 rigid division. First, the situation is set forth in its 
 true aspect (§§ 1-29) ; next, the orator, passing, as his 
 custom is, to the moral side, combats the deep-seated 
 apathy of the people (§§ 30-51) ; and finally, breaks 
 
102 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. v. 
 
 forth against the venal politicians who flatter the base 
 appetites of the people, and deaden the public honour 
 
 (§§ 52-75)- 
 
 The passage of eloquent self-justification in §§ 67- 
 7 2 contains the orator's conception of a statesman ; 
 the manner in which the personal element is here 
 almost effaced in the desire to assert a great principle, 
 is profoundly characteristic of Demosthenes. 
 
 The real subject of debate, says Demosthenes, is 
 not the conduct or intentions of Diopeithes, but the 
 safety of the Chersonese, which once lost cannot be 
 recovered (§§ 1-3). We ought, we are told, to choose 
 between peace and war. But Philip leaves us no 
 choice in the matter; we are driven to act in self- 
 defence, unless it be maintained that Philip may 
 attack us anywhere except on Attic soil, but that we 
 may not attack him even in Thrace (§§ 4-S). Again it 
 is said, Diopeithes has been behaving as a freebooter, 
 and his forces ought to be disbanded. Excellent ad- 
 vice, if Philip is also prepared to disband his forces. 
 Otherwise it is the old story over again — Philip at the 
 head of a permanent army, executing swift surprises, 
 we hastening to the rescue when the mischief is done 
 (§§ 9-12). The hidden purpose of such counsel is to 
 paralyze us, while Philip is left free to march to By- 
 zantium, to the Chersonese, or even to the borders of 
 Attica. Our clear duty is to send funds and rein- 
 forcements to Diopeithes, not to lend ourselves to 
 carry out the dearest wishes of Philij) (§§ 13-20). " I 
 desire, therefore, to question you ^ freely about our 
 present situation, and to consider what we ourselves 
 are now doing, and how we are conducting our aftairs. 
 We do not choose to raise money, nor do we dare to 
 serve in person, nor can we keep our hands off the 
 public funds, nor do we make over to Diopeithes the 
 contributions of the allies, nor do we sanction the sup- 
 ' Reading with S. Vfj-aa not irpot vfjias. 
 
CHAP, v.] rUBLIC LIFE AND SPEECHES. 103 
 
 plies he finds for himself; but we eye him maliciously, 
 and question the source of these supplies, and pry into 
 his plans, and keep up a jealous scrutiny. Nor yet, 
 being in this frame of mind, are we inclined to attend to 
 our own concerns, but, while with our lips we applaud 
 those who hold language worthy of Athens, in act we 
 co-operate with their opponents. It is your practice, 
 when a speaker comes forward, to ask him, 'What then 
 are we to do ?' I should like to ask you, ' What then 
 are we to say?' For if you will neither raise money, 
 nor serve in person, nor keep your hands off the public 
 funds, nor make over to Diopeithes the contributions 
 of the allies, nor leave him to supply himself, nor 
 resolve to attend to your own concerns, I know not 
 what to say" (§§ 21-23). Diopeithes is obliged to 
 provide for his troops as all Athenian commanders 
 have done before him ; he levies contributions under 
 the name of" benevolences " (p. 20). There are some 
 who, caring more for the Greeks of Asia than they do 
 for the Greeks of their own country, accuse Diopeithes 
 before the people. This can have but one result, to 
 impair his authority abroad, and 'cut off his last re- 
 source. The proposal to send an army to watch and 
 control him is an extreme of folly. If he must be 
 recalled and brought to trial, a despatch will suffice 
 
 (§§ 24-29)- 
 
 The people conspire with their counsellors to shift 
 the blame of their misfortunes upon some helpless 
 victim ; they fear to recognise the true culprit, who, 
 they know, cannot be chastised save by force of arms. 
 Pampered into timid inaction by their leaders, they 
 find at last that their existence is at stake. What 
 answer could you make to the reproaches of the 
 Greek states, if they addressed you thus? — "Athenians, 
 you send us constant embassies, you warn us against 
 Philip ; what have you done yourselves, while Philip 
 was absent and ill ? You have not so much as de- 
 
I04 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. v. 
 
 livered two cities in Euboea, hostile outposts planted 
 against Attica ; you have proved that, were Philip to 
 die ten times over, you would not bestir yourselves " 
 (§§ 30-37)- If you ask my positive advice, I would 
 say : " first convince yourselves that Philip is at war 
 with Athens, that he has broken the peace, that he is 
 the deadly enemy of the whole city, of the verj' ground 
 on which it stands, nay, of every human being within 
 its walls. . . . But with nothing is he so much at war 
 as with our constitution, against nothing are his designs 
 equally directed, on no single aim is he so much bent 
 as on its destruction." Be assured that Philip's 
 activity in Thrace is with a view to mastery in Attica. 
 He does not rough it in that slough of despond for 
 the sake of the millet and barley in the Thracian pits. 
 In the face of this restless enemy you must maintain 
 the existing force at the seat of war as a permanent 
 army of reserve. All this demands heavy sacrifices, 
 but these must not deter us. " Suppose you have the 
 word of a god for what it is beyond mortal power to 
 promise — that, if you continue quiet and make sur- 
 render of all, Philip will not finally turn his arms 
 against you ; still, by Zeus and all the gods, it is a 
 disgraceful act, unworthy of yourselves and of your 
 country's past, and of your fothers' achievements, to 
 abandon all the rest of Greece to bondage for the 
 sake of selfish ease. For myself, I would rather be 
 dead than have offered such advice." ^^'e will act, 
 you say, when there is necessity. The necessity most 
 imperious to freemen has come, or rather gone — the 
 necessity of honour. A slave's necessity is chastise- 
 ment and the lash (§§ 3S-51). 
 
 Some orators dwell largely on the advantages of 
 peace, and on the waste and misappropriation of public 
 money entailed by war. Their pacific counsels are 
 superfluous ; more fitly would they be addressed to 
 Philip than to you. Such men grieve over the risk of 
 
CHAP, v.] PUBLIC LIFE AND SPEECHES. 105 
 
 petty peculation ; they look on with indifference 
 while Philip" is making all Greece his prey. They 
 attempt to cast on us the odium of kindling war, as 
 if war was not long since kindled. And war upon us 
 means a war of extermination. " Philip well knows 
 that you will not be his slaves ; that you could not if 
 you would, for you are used to empire" (§§ 52-60). 
 
 Now you cannot vanquish your enemy outside 
 until you have punished the enemy within the 
 walls; for Philip, who elsewhere has been forced to 
 lavish kindness on a people in order to overcome 
 them, has been able to inflict on you loss after loss 
 without equivalent, and all because of the license 
 granted to his advocates in Athens. "Thanks to this, 
 some of them have exchanged penury for sudden 
 wealth, a nameless obscurity for eminence and renown ; 
 while you from honour have sunk into obscurity, from 
 affluence to destitution — for the wealth of a state 
 consists, to my mind at least, in allies, credit, esteem, 
 of all which you are destitute. It is because you dis- 
 regard Philip's progress, and suffer events to drift as 
 they will, that he has become prosperous and power- 
 ful, a terror to all men, Greeks or barbarians ; you 
 stand alone and degraded ; splendid in the profu- 
 sion of the market, but in every needful provision 
 contemptible. . . . Then some chance speaker rises 
 and says : ' What ! you make no proposal, you do 
 not hazard a motion, you are timid and spiritless.' 
 Brazen, offensive, and impudent, I am not, and hope 
 I never may be ; yet I count myself more truly 
 courageous than your dashing politicians. To im- 
 peach, confiscate, reward, and accuse, without regard 
 to the public interest, — all this demands no exercise of 
 courage. When a man's own safety is guaranteed 
 him by speeches and measures which court your 
 favour, he is bold without much risk. But he, who 
 for your good often thwarts your wishes, who never 
 
io6 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. v. 
 
 speaks to win your favour, but always to promote 
 your interest ; who, while pursuing a policy in which 
 fortune prevails more commonly than forethought, 
 makes himself responsible before you alike for the 
 plan and for the issue — he is truly courageous, such 
 an one does genuine service ; not those who for an 
 ephemeral popularity have sacrificed the country's 
 highest welfare — men whom I am so far from wishing 
 to emulate or from regarding as citizens worthy of 
 Athens, that if the question were put to me, ' And 
 you, what services, pray, have you done our country?' 
 I would pass by the duties I have discharged as 
 trierarch and choirmaster, the sums I have contri- 
 buted, the captives I have ransomed, and other like 
 acts of benevolence ; I would merely say that my 
 policy has nothing in common with such as theirs. 
 Able I may be, as well as others, to accuse, to bribe, 
 to confiscate, in a word, to act as they do ; yet never 
 have I chosen any such part, never have I been be- 
 trayed into it by avarice or ambition. My language 
 has consistently been such as to place me below many 
 in your eyes, but such as would exalt you, if you would 
 but listen to me. Thus much I may be allowed to 
 say without offence. Nor do I take it to be my part, 
 as an honest citizen, to devise a policy which would 
 speedily make me pre-eminent in Athens, and you 
 last among the nations. The country ought to grow 
 in greatness as the measures of patriots unfold ; it is 
 the duty of all to recommend always what is most 
 salutary, not what is easiest. Nature herself will take 
 the road to what is easy ; it needs the lessons of a 
 l)atriotic elo(iuence to conduct the hearers to what is 
 salutary "' (§§ 61-72). I am reproached with speaking 
 merely and not acting, liut I hold that speech is 
 action in a statesman; his word is his work; his 
 province is to counsel, it is for you to e.xecute (§§ 
 73-75)- 
 
CHAP, v.] PUBLIC LIFE AND SPEECHES. 107 
 
 Demosthenes then sums up his advice. If the 
 vigorous action he urges is taken, he expresses a hope 
 (though in a tone of abated confidence) of a return 
 to better days. But, without such action, all the 
 eloquence in the world could not save the country 
 
 (§§ 76, 7 7)- 
 
 The Third Philippic followed after an interval of a 
 few months, the situation being still unchanged. It 
 has been pronounced by many ancient and modern 
 critics to be the greatest of the popular speeches of 
 Demosthenes. In one respect at least it rises above 
 the speech Oti the Chersonese. The orator's vision is 
 enlarged and yet intensified. He speaks as a 
 Hellenic patriot rather than as an Athenian citizen. 
 Every thought is here subordinated to the danger of 
 Greece. He had not hitherto ventured to bring a 
 formal motion, but the ground was cleared by the last 
 speech, and the minds of the Athenians were ready to 
 receive the plainest counsels. He now proposes that 
 Athens should arm herself and head a Hellenic 
 league. The despatch of envoys to the various states, 
 incidentally recommended in The Chersonese, here 
 rises into prominence. Though the tone of the speech 
 marks a sense of danger more pressing than before, 
 it is very far removed from despair. The hopeful ex- 
 pressions, both in the beginning and the end (§§ 4 
 and 76), are strikingly bold. 
 
 It is here more than usually difficult to convey by 
 extracts any impression of the eloquence of Demos- 
 thenes. The force of the speech lies largely in rapid 
 enumerations of recent facts (§§ 11, 12, 15-17, 26, 27, 
 32-35, 65-67), and in contrasts drawn from the past. 
 Impassioned and compressed narrative takes the 
 place of close argument. INIany of the same facts 
 appear in repeated allusions, but each time in a fresh 
 setting and under new lights. Stroke follows upon 
 stroke in swift succession. Each familiar name calls 
 
loS DEMOSTHENES. [chap. v. 
 
 up an eventful history and associations of its own, 
 and the retrospect is charged with bitter memories. 
 Such a historical review, cumulative in its effect, must 
 be read continuously; the parts hardly bear to be 
 separated from the contexture of the whole. 
 
 A critical question of much interest, as touching 
 the method of Demosthenes' composition, attaches 
 itself to the Third Fhilippic. The best manuscript, 
 the Parisian S (as well as the Laurentian L which is 
 of the same family), differs remarkably from the 
 ordinary text by the omission of phrases and of 
 whole passages. The variation seems due to a double 
 recension ; both texts probably proceed from Demos- 
 thenes himself Good reasons have been brought for 
 supposing the shorter text of S to represent the 
 maturer correction of the orator. 
 
 Early in the speech (§§ 6-20) the question is raised, 
 which had formed the groundwork of the speech On 
 the Chersonese, Is it still possible to choose between 
 jieace and war? The treatment, however, is here 
 broader and leads to more comprehensive conclusions. 
 If the choice, says Demosthenes, were still open, he 
 would be in favour of peace ; but Philip speaks peace 
 and acts war ;^ it was to procure such a one-sided 
 ])eace as the present that he had dealt his bribes. If 
 the Athenians were waiting for a declaration of war, 
 they might learn by the examples of Olyntlnis, Phocis, 
 Pherre, and Oreus, that it was not Philip's practice 
 to declare war till he was at the gates. Nor would 
 he make an exception in favour of Athens ; if she 
 shut her eyes, it was not for him to enlighten her. If 
 they looked, however, not at words but at deeds, they 
 might convince themselves that from the day that 
 Phocis was destroyed, Philip had been at war ; unless 
 it were maintained that to bring up siege-batteries 
 did not mean war, till the batteries were planted 
 
 * A maxim recommended and carried out by Napoleon I. 
 
CHAP, v.] PUBLIC LIFE AND SPEECHES. 109 
 
 against the walls. They were bound then to defend 
 the Chersonese and Byzantium, but that was not 
 enough ; larger issues were now involved, for all Greece 
 stood in imminent peril. 
 
 In the second division of the speech (§§ 21-35) he 
 gives the grounds of this conviction. A new fact was 
 visible in Greek history. Athens, Sparta, and Thebes, 
 when in turn they were supreme, had been jealously 
 watched by the other states and their excesses checked ; 
 but Philip was allowed full power to do as he would 
 — " to fleece, to pillage, and to enslave " state after 
 state. Rapidly he enumerates the violent deeds of 
 him, whose " ambition neither Hellas nor the land of 
 the barbarians can contain." The Greeks, " self- 
 blockaded in their cities " (Siopcopvyfieda Kara TToAets), 
 saw and heard all, without one effort to combine and 
 save Greece, each one resolved to make the most of 
 his own brief respite, while his neighbour was perish- 
 ing ; though there was none so far off, but that Philip 
 came to him at last with the certainty of a fever's 
 access. The sufferings that Greeks had formerly 
 undergone at the hands of Sparta and Athens were 
 sufferings inflicted by true-born Greeks. Phihp's 
 domination was so far worse than theirs, as the waste 
 and ruin of an estate by a slave was worse than mis- 
 management by the lawful heir ; for Philip was no 
 Greek, nor even a barbarian of respectable origin. 
 And to fill the measure of his insolence, the destroyer 
 of Greek cities presided at the Pythian games, and 
 issued his mandates to all. The Greeks looked on 
 as they might at a hailstorm, praying that they them- 
 selves might be spared, but without an effort to pre- 
 vent it. Even their own private -swongs they took 
 quietly — so far were they from redressing the wrongs 
 of Greece. They faced one another in a torpor of 
 mistrust. 
 
 Next he asks the cause of this change (§§ 36-69), 
 
no DEMOSTHENES. [chap. v. 
 
 and he finds it not in any accident of individual life. 
 "Something there once was in the heart of the masses 
 which there is not now, something which prevailed 
 over the wealth of Persia, which kept Greece in free- 
 dom, which was unvanquished in battle by land or 
 sea." This secret force was a hatred of bribery. 
 "New principles are now imported, wherewith Greece 
 is sick even to death. And what are these? Envy, 
 if a man has taken a bribe ; ridicule, if he confesses 
 it ; pardon, if the guilt is proved ; hatred of those 
 who censure him ; and ever)' other appendage of 
 corruption." Wealth, population, all the material 
 elements of strength, were by this pervading vice 
 rendered impotent and unavailing. The sense of 
 Panhellenic interests, which their forefathers mani- 
 fested in stern decrees, had died out. Bribed coun- 
 sellors possessed the ear of the Assembly ; and yet 
 Olynthus, Euboea, and Oreus were so many standing 
 warnings of cities which had met their fate by listen- 
 ing to the counsels of treason. 
 
 Lastly, Demosthenes introduces his own substantive 
 proposal (§§ 70-76), with the prefatory words, that if 
 the rest of the world consented to be slaves, Athens, 
 at least, must do battle for freedom. Let them, while 
 their strength was unspent and while honour survived, 
 first arm themselves, and show Greece that they were 
 in earnest ; next, send envoys everywhere to organise 
 a national league. But he insists and repeats that to 
 their own efforts they must primarily trust, that Athens 
 was now the last stay of Greece. " If you think that 
 Chalcidians or Megarians will save Greece, while you 
 shirk the contest, you are mistaken. . . . The task is 
 yours : this is the privilege won and bequeathed to 
 you by your ancestors at the cost of many and great 
 dangers. 
 
 " This," he concludes. " is what I have to say, these 
 arc the measures I propose. Adopt these measures, and 
 
CHAP, v.] PUBLIC LIFE AND SPEECHES. in 
 
 it is my belief that even yet our affairs may be retrieved. 
 If any man has better advice to offer, let him speak 
 forth and declare his counsel. And, be your decision 
 what it may, grant, all ye gods, that it may be for our 
 good !" 
 
 The years 340 B.C. to 338 B.C. were a period of 
 great awakening for Athens. Demosthenes was now 
 supreme director of the state, and by these years he 
 himself (in The Crown) claims to be judged. The 
 literary record of his eloquence fails us just at the 
 point where it achieved its highest successes. None 
 of the speeches of this period are preserved. The 
 earlier harangues were committed to writing by the 
 orator, in the hope that their influence might outlive 
 the moment of delivery. But speech now passed 
 into instant action, and attained its end ; and the 
 only memorial of these orations is contained in a few 
 ppieaclid pages of history. First Eubcea was wrested 
 flora Phihp. Athens became the centre of a Hel- 
 lenic league comprising Eubcea, Acarnania, Corinth, 
 Achsea, Corcyra, Megara. By the force of his 
 eloquence Demosthenes won back to Athens the 
 estranged Byzantines, whose city, soon afterwards 
 besieged by Philip, was relieved by Athenian arms. 
 From west to east, wherever a patriotic resistance was 
 organised, Demosthenes was the soul of the move- 
 ment. At the same time he combated internal abuses. 
 He had begun his public life with a proposed measure 
 of navy reform, and now in the teeth of intrigue and 
 opposition he carried a measure at once more simple 
 and more complete. Under the existing system all 
 who were liable to the charge of the Trierarchy con- 
 tributed an equal share. By the Trierarchic Law of 
 Demosthenes the share of each was in proportion to 
 his rated property, and the burden equitably adjusted 
 between rich and poor. A social grievance was thus 
 removed. The measure was justified by its practical 
 
112 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. v. 
 
 working. Evasions and delays were now almost 
 unknown, and among the most striking features of 
 the war was the increased efficiency of the marine. 
 Another of his measures was a still greater triumph. 
 In the First Olynthiac (349 B.C.) he had delicately 
 approached the question of the Festival Fund ; not 
 until 339 B.C. could he carry his long wished for 
 reform, by which the surplus of the yearly expendi- 
 ture went not to the Theoricon, but to war purposes. 
 Thus, at the final crisis, the Athenian populace learnt 
 to renounce some cherished pleasures. 
 
 For a brief space it seemed as if all mi^ht yet be 
 retrieved. But another Sacred War, opportunely 
 kindled, brought Philip once more within Greece to 
 e.xercise " the protectorate of religion " (Aesch. Ctcs. 
 § 129). The precise point at which intrigue began 
 cannot be determined ; but events so followed one 
 another as to bear all the marks of a studied plot; 
 and in this plot Aeschines would seem to have been 
 a chief accomplice. Once inside Thermopylre, Philip 
 forgot his mission against the guilty Locrians, and 
 seizing Elatea, commanded the passes into Bceotia. 
 
 The sequel is well known from the famous narra- 
 tive in The Croni/i ; — the evening tidings brought to 
 Athens — the consternation in the city — the hastily 
 convened Assembly — the long silence and pause of 
 expectation till Demosthenes arose and gave his 
 counsel — his embassy to Thebes, resulting in alliance 
 between Thebes and Athens. Here was the crowning 
 achievement of his eloquence. Old jealousies were 
 silenced, and the rival cities stood loyally together till 
 Cha:ronea, where " the liberties of Greece were buried 
 in the graves of the fallen" (Lycurg. Lcocrat. § 50). 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 HIS PUBLIC LIFE AND SPEECHES. FROM CH/ERONEA 
 (338 B.C.) TO HIS DEATH {322 B.C.) 
 
 The part that Demosthenes had henceforth to play 
 was reduced to narrower Hmits. Athens, indeed, 
 still retained municipal independence ; unlike Thebes, 
 she had not yet received a Macedonian garrison, and 
 Demosthenes, recognising the altered situation, devoted 
 himself to internal affairs. He still looked forward 
 to Philip's death as a possible moment for the enfran- 
 chisement of Greece ; but the doom inflicted on the 
 rebellious Thebes by Alexander (335 B.C.) threw back 
 such hopes into a more distant future. With the 
 marv^ellous conquests of Alexander in Asia, Macedonian 
 influence became dominant at Athens ; yet popular 
 sympathy did not desert the patriots. The year 330 
 B.C. afforded a decisive test of feeling. To this year 
 belongs the speech on The Croivii, the last speech of 
 Demosthenes, and the noblest monument of ancient 
 eloquence. The case had its origin in these circum- 
 stances. — In 338 B.C., after the battle of Chseronea, 
 Demosthenes had held a double office ; he had been 
 placed on the Commission for the fortification of 
 Athens, and had been made treasurer of the Theori- 
 con. Early in 336 B.C. Ctesiphon proposed that he 
 should receive a golden crown for his services, and 
 that the proclamation of the crown should be made 
 I 
 
114 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. vi. 
 
 in the Theatre at the Great Dionysia ; that is, in the 
 presence of all the strangers assembled at Athens for 
 the festival The measure was passed by the Council, 
 and thus became a TrpofSovkevixa (bill). It still needed 
 the ratification of the Assembly to become a \l.-i'i(f)icrfia 
 (decree). Aeschines at this point stopped the progresr 
 of the bill by a notice that he would bring a Graphe 
 Paronomon (p. 31) against Ctesiphon. The grounds 
 of his indictment were three : ( i ) that it was not true 
 that Demosthenes had done good service to the state, 
 and the laws forbade the insertion of a falsehood in 
 the public records ; (2) that he had not yet passed his 
 audit, and that it was illegal to crown an official in 
 such a position ; (3) that the proclamation of the 
 crown in the Theatre was unlawful. 
 
 That charges so different as those contained under 
 the first and the other two heads of the indictment 
 should be capable of being combined shows a curious 
 state of legal procedure, and illustrates the misappli- 
 cation and abuse of the Graphe Paronomon. The so- 
 called falsehood under the first head was not a cjuestion 
 of fact, but a question of opinion upon pohtics. It 
 could only have found a place in this accusation by 
 a loose extension of the phrase unconstitutional to 
 denote all that was inexpedient to the state. The 
 manoeuvTC was a skilful one, by which Aeschines here 
 contrived to associate the policy of Demosthenes with 
 an irrelevant technicality. That the real issue, how- 
 ever, lay in the first article of indictment was, in spite 
 of disguises, recognised by Aeschines no less than by 
 Demosthenes. The question was whether the policy 
 of Demosthenes had been condemned by the event. 
 Of the other points of the charge the second was 
 legally sound. The rule of law was clear, though it 
 had been often violated in custom. The third was 
 more doubtful. Aeschines admitted that there wa.<; 
 one exceptional case in which the crown might be 
 
CHAP. VI.] PUBLIC LIFE AND SPEECHES. 115 
 
 bestowed in the Theatre ; but it applied, according to 
 him, only to crowns bestowed by foreign states. The 
 letter of the law seems to have been here in favour of 
 Demosthenes, but in the absence of more complete 
 documentary evidence some uncertainty must remain. 
 For six years Aeschines did not venture to bring the 
 case into court. Even after Cha^ronea, Demosthenes 
 received marks of unabated confidence from the people. 
 It was not till the complete triumph of the Macedonian 
 power that Aeschines saw his opportunity. Philip had 
 died in 336 B.C., Alexander had crossed into Asia in 
 334 B.C., and in 331 b.c. had won his great victory at 
 Arbela. The next year witnessed the failure of Agis' 
 attempted rising in the Peloponnese. The patriot 
 party seemed silenced, and Aeschines now brought his 
 long-delayed action in presence of all Greece. 
 
 It was no ordinary criminal case. It marked the 
 last moment in a personal duel carried on for sixteen 
 years between famous antagonists. It was, moreover, 
 the closing scene of a conflict between parties — a con- 
 flict which had broadened into a national struggle. 
 Judgment had to be passed on two rival policies, 
 between which it was not possible to be neutral. 
 
 The speech of Aeschines is as usual clear and lucid 
 in arrangement. He proceeds at once to the technical 
 points, and states them so as to set off the legal strength 
 of his position. At the end of the speech he enforces 
 them once more. In the body of the speech he 
 reviews the career of Demosthenes in four periods : 
 I. From the beginning of the war with Philip about 
 Amphipolis to the peace of Philocrates (357-346 
 B.C.); 11. From that peace to the renewal of the 
 war (346-340 B.C.); III. From the renewal of the 
 war to Chseronea (340—338 b.c); IV. From 338 
 B.C. up to the present time. There is one remark- 
 able note of weakness in the speech. Aeschines, 
 intent apparently on catching votes on both sides, 
 
ii6 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. vi. 
 
 himself halts between two opinions. He never 
 definitely either approves or condemns the general 
 policy of resistance to Macedon. Though the dominant 
 tone seems to betray Macedonian sympathy, an opposite 
 sentiment is in parts visible. The treatment of periods 
 I. and IV. is designed to discredit Demosthenes with 
 the patriot party. The charges against him in the 
 first period, and in part of the second, almost retort 
 those of Demosthenes against Aeschines in the speech 
 On the Embassy. And in the fourth period he is 
 accused of having neglected three occasions of rising 
 against Alexander. This puzzling ambiguity of view 
 is hardly explicable, e.xcept on the supposition that 
 Aeschines, secure of the Macedonian support, thought 
 to better his case by proving that, judged even as 
 an anti- Macedonian and a patriot, Demosthenes was 
 insincere. 
 
 Demosthenes in his reply deals rapidly with Period 
 I. During that period he had held no accepted 
 position at Athens, and he speaks of it as strictly 
 irrelevant to the main charge. He confines himself 
 almost entirely to the peace negotiations of 346 b.c, 
 which had been impugned by Aeschines. His version 
 of these negotiations is marked rather by boldness of 
 outline than by faithfulness to fact. Had he com- 
 mented on the earlier years of this period, within which 
 fell the First Philippic and the Olynthiac orations, he 
 would have occupied a strong vantage-ground But 
 he had no wish to waken exasperating memories of 
 warnings despised. Throughout the speech he is at 
 pains to estabhsh a solidarity between himself and 
 the Athenian people. The periods, therefore, on 
 which he expatiates, and on which he rests his claim 
 to honour, are the second, and still more, the third — 
 years in which he had become supreme, in which 
 Athens, at one with him, had taken up the struggle 
 and failed. The stress of the accusation had been 
 
CHAP. VI.] PUBLIC LIFE AND SPEECHES. 117 
 
 laid upon the final war (340-338 B.C.), and Demos- 
 thenes is content to accept the challenge. He points 
 triumphantly to those days when doom was gathering 
 for measures and actions conceived in the spirit of 
 the imperial city. The fourth period he passes over 
 in silence, but for the brief allusions in §§ 320-323. 
 Events of that period, subsequent to the decree of 
 Ctesiphon, were in truth outside the scope of an 
 oration in defence of that decree. Moreover it was 
 a time in which speech and action were alike fettered ; 
 and the cautious reserve of The Crozun in its references 
 to Alexander does but foreshadow the new epoch 
 which commenced after Chaeronea. 
 
 Demosthenes, in reviewing his own life, follows in 
 the main the divisions into periods marked out by 
 Aeschines. But the narrative with him is by no 
 means continuous. Period I. of Aeschines is covered 
 by §§ 18-52 of The Civivn; Period IL by §§ 60-109; 
 Period III. by §§ 160-187 and §§ 211-251. The 
 motive w^hich governed this arrangement will become 
 clearer by exhibiting the structure of the whole. 
 Roughly speaking, the design is to keep the technical 
 points of law in the background — they are inserted 
 between Periods II. and III. — to begin and end with 
 public policy, so adjusting the emphasis that a pre- 
 ponderating weight may fall upon Period III. 
 
 In form an apology the speech is in reality a 
 glowing eulogy, not so much on the orator himself as 
 on Athens that trusted him. Such a skeleton of the 
 speech as I can here add is no more than a guide to 
 studying the multiform and intricate structure of the 
 whole. 
 
 The Exordium (§§ 1-8) is distinguished by a solemn 
 invocation of the gods, an exceptional beginning in 
 Greek oratory. In §§ 9-53 Demosthenes refutes 
 certain charges, which he says are in fact alien to the 
 case. These chiefly concern the events of 346 B.C., 
 
Ii8 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. vi. 
 
 and attach themselves to Aeschines' first period. He 
 describes the state of Greece before the negotiations 
 of 346 B.C. (§§ 18-24); he tells of the delay in the 
 ratification of the treaty (§§ 25-30), of the ruin of 
 Phocis (§§ 31-41), and of the immediate effects upon 
 the Greek world (§§ 42-51). 
 
 His formal reply to the indictment is contained in 
 §§ 53-125. His answer to the first charge consists 
 in a review of his own policy, foreign (§§ 60-101) and 
 domestic (§§ 102-109), i^ ^he years of peace from 
 346—340 B.C. (Period H. of Aeschines). Among 
 the achievements of his foreign or Hellenic policy he 
 singles out the liberation of Eubcea, and the deliver- 
 ance of Byzantium and of the Chersonese. The one 
 measure of home policy which he records is the reform 
 of the trierarchy. Early in this division of the speech 
 he thrice raises a question which runs through the 
 very tissue of The Crozcm, a question which Aeschines 
 never fairly faces. I quote one of these passages : 
 " What course ought Athens to have adopted when 
 she beheld Philip intriguing for empire and do- 
 minion over Greece ? \Vhat language ought I <o 
 have held, what measures to have proposed, I, your 
 counsellor at Athens — for this point is of capital im- 
 ]:)ortance — I, who knew that from all time down to 
 the day when I first spoke in public, my countr)' had 
 ever striven for pre-eminence, for honour, and for 
 renown ; and had spent more blood and treasure in 
 the cause of glory and in the interests of Greece at 
 large, than any other Greek state had spent upon its 
 own private ends : I who saw that Philip himself, with 
 whom wc had to contend, had in pursuit of sovereignty 
 and power accepted the loss of his eye, the fracture 
 of his collar-bone, the mutilation of his hand and leg, 
 gladly resigning to Fortune any part of his body which 
 she might be pleased to take, if only with the rest he 
 might live on in honour and renown ? Here again, I 
 
CHAP. VI.] PUBLIC LIFE AND SPEECHES. 119 
 
 ask, who would dare to say that a man born and bred 
 at Pella, a place at that time petty and obscure, had 
 a right to such an innate grandeur of spirit as to aspire 
 to the empire of Greece, and to harbour the project in 
 his thoughts ; while you, Athenians, who day by day 
 in every word you hear and every sight you see con- 
 template the memorials of the prowess of your fore- 
 fathers, might be so intrinsically base as uninvited 
 and unforced to surrender to Philip the liberty of 
 Greece?" (§§ 66-68). 
 
 In § no he professes to have concluded the 
 examination of his public policy, and proceeds to the 
 technical side of the indictment. His reply here 
 (§§ 1 10-125) is cursory and unsatisfactory. On one 
 head — the crowning of an official before he had 
 passed his audit — the defence is most sophistical. |/ 2_ 
 
 The special charges are now refuted, and, as if the 
 speech were drawing to a close, he assumes the right 
 to a freer handling, such as is generally reserved for 
 the epilogue. The portion which follows, from §§ 
 126-159, may indeed be called a pseudo -epilogue. 
 It is an attack upon Aeschines in his private (§§ 126- 
 131) and in his political (§§ 131-159) life. But it is 
 designed to serve as a transition to the closing scene 
 of the great drama, a scene which exhibits Demos- 
 thenes in sharpest contrast with his rival. While 
 recounting the part played by Aeschines in kindhng 
 a new Amphictyonic war, he is led, by apparent 
 accident, to resume the thread of his own policy, and 
 to trace it onward in a memorable description, from 
 the seizure of Elatea and the Athenian embassy to 
 Thebes, to the last struggle with Philip (§§ 160-251). 
 This period of glory and disaster (Period III. in 
 Aeschines' division) furnishes him with the noblest 
 inspiration of his eloquence. The self-vindication 
 contained in the reflections (§§ 188-210), which 
 interrupt the narrative of events, forms the climax of 
 
120 DEMOSTHENES. [cii.vr. vi. 
 
 the speech. Having shown that the statesman is 
 responsible only for prudent counsels, but that the 
 issue of events is in the hands of the gods, he 
 ventures on a farther step : — 
 
 " As, however, he bears so hardly upon the results, 
 I am ready to make a statement which may sound 
 startling. I ask every man, as he fears Zeus and the 
 gods, not to be shocked at my paradox until he has 
 calmly considered my meaning. I say that, if the 
 event had been manifest to the whole world before- 
 hand, if all men had been fully aware of it, if you, 
 Aeschines, who never opened your lips, had been 
 ever so loud or shrill in prophecy or in protest, not 
 even then ought Athens to have forsaken this course, 
 if Athens had any regard for her glory, or for her 
 past, or for the ages to come. No7o, of course, she 
 seems to have failed ; but failure is for all men 
 when Heaven so decrees. In the other case, she, 
 who claims the first place in Greece, would have 
 renounced it, and would have incurred the reproach 
 of having betrayed all Greece to Philip. If she had 
 indeed betrayed without a blow those things for 
 which our ancestors endured everj' imaginable danger, 
 who would not have spurned, Aeschines, at you i 
 Not at Athens — the gods forbid ! — nor at me. In 
 the name of Zeus, how could we have looked visitors 
 in the face, if, tilings having come to their present pass 
 — Philip having been elected leader and lord of all — 
 the struggle against it had been sustained by others 
 without our help, and this though never once in her 
 past history our city had preferred inglorious safety to 
 the perilous vindication of honour? AVliat Greek, 
 what barbarian, does not know that the Thebans, and 
 their predecessors in power, the Lacedaemonians, and 
 the Persian King, would have been glad and thankful 
 to let Athens take anything that she liked, besides 
 keeping what she had got, if she would only have 
 
CHAP. VI.] rUBLIC LIFE AND SPEECHES. 121 
 
 done what she was told, and allowed some other 
 power to lead Greece? Such a bargain, however, 
 was for the Athenians of those days neither traditional 
 nor congenial, nor supportable. In the whole course 
 of her annals, no one could ever persuade Athens 
 to side with dishonest strength, to accept a secure 
 slavery, or to desist at any moment of her career 
 from doing battle and braving danger for pre-emi- 
 nence, for honour, and for renown. . . . 
 
 "If I presumed to say that it was /who thus inspired 
 you with a spirit worthy of your ancestors, there is not 
 a man present who might not properly rebuke me. 
 What I do maintain is that these principles of conduct 
 were your own ; that this spirit existed in the city 
 before my intervention, but that, in the successive 
 chapters of events, I had my share of merit as your 
 servant. Aeschines, on the contrary, denounces our 
 policy as a whole, invokes your resentment against 
 me, as the author of the city's terrors and dangers, 
 and, in his anxiety to A\Test from me the distinction of 
 the hour, robs you of glories which will be celebrated 
 as long as time endures. For, if you condemn 
 Ctesiphon on the ground that my public course was 
 misdirected, then you will be adjudged guilty of error: 
 you will no longer appear as sufferers by the perver- 
 sity of fortune. 
 
 "But never, Athenians, never can it be said that you 
 erred Avhen you took upon you that peril for the freedom 
 and safety of all ! No, by our fathers who met the danger 
 at Marathon ; no, by our fathers who stood in the ranks 
 at Plataea ; no, by our fathers who did battle on the 
 waters of Salamis and Artemision; no, by all the brave 
 who sleep in tombs at which their country paid those 
 last honours which she had awarded, Aeschines, to 
 all of them alike, not alone to the successful or the 
 victorious. And her award was just. The part of 
 brave men had been done by all. The fortune ex- 
 
122 DEMOSTHENES. chap. vi. 
 
 perienced by the individual among them had been 
 allotted by a Power above man."^ 
 
 The real epilogue begins at § 252, and forms the 
 remainder of the speech, which now marches forward 
 with the conscious strength of victory. Aeschines 
 had accused Demosthenes of being the evil genius of 
 Athens ; Demosthenes contrasts his own fortune with 
 that of Aeschines in a passage of overpowering abuse 
 outmatching the scurrility of the accuser (§§ 256-269). 
 Then, with rapid self-recovery, he ascends out of this 
 region to take a wider view (§§ 270-275), and the 
 next reply on a personal point is marked by more 
 gravity and self-control (§§ 276-284). In §§ 2S5-290 
 he appeals again, as he had already done before 
 (§§ 248-250), to the people's verdict on him after 
 Cha^ronoa. The concluding passage (§§ 291-324) is a 
 summing up and enlargement of what has preceded ; 
 and, though the topics handled are directly suggested 
 by the charges of Aeschines, the breadth and general- 
 ity of the principles stated or implied transcend the 
 special application. I quote the following as an in- 
 stance of dignified self-eulogy : — 
 
 " Of this shameful and notorious conspiracy and 
 baseness, Athenians, or rather — not to trifle with words 
 — of this treason to the liberties of Greece, Athens 
 by my counsel stands guiltless before the world, as do 
 I before you. And yet you ask, what is my title to 
 honour ? I will tell you. It is that, when every other 
 public man in Greece, beginning with yourself, had 
 been corrupted first by Philip, and now by Alexander, 
 I could not be wrought upon or tempted by opportu- 
 nities, by soft words, by large promises, by hope, by 
 fear, or any other motive, to give up any one of what 
 I deemed to be the rights or interests of my country. 
 Never have I offered my counsels to this people in 
 
 * Tliis passage is quoted from Professor Jcbb's translation of 
 il in Attic Orators, ii. p. 412, etc. 
 
CHAP. VI.] rUBLIC LIFE AND SPEECHES. 123 
 
 the spirit of you and your fellows, going over with a 
 swing of the balance to the side of profit, but in 
 straightforwardness, integrity, and incorruptibility of 
 purpose; in guiding more momentous affairs than any 
 man of my time my whole administration has been 
 sound and upright. Such is my title to honour. 
 
 " And as to those fortifications and entrenchments 
 which you turned to scorn, I deem them commend- 
 able and praiseworthy — assuredly I do ; but I place 
 them on a level far below my political measures. Not 
 with stones, not with bricks, did I fortify Athens, nor 
 do I count these the proudest of my achievements. 
 If you would fairly look at my works of fortification, 
 you will find them in arms, cities, stations, harbours, 
 fleets, horses in plenty, and men to defend them. 
 These are the lines I drew round Attica, so far as was 
 in human foresight possible ; these are the works with 
 which I fortified our territory, not the circuit of the 
 Piraeus or of the city alone" (§§ 299, 300). . . . "Had 
 there been found in each state in Greece a single 
 man such as I have been at my post among you ; nay, 
 had Thessaly possessed but one man, had Arcadia 
 possessed one, like-minded with myself, not a Greek, 
 either within or without the Pass, would have been 
 in the plight they are in to-day" (§ 304), 
 
 The passion of this peroration is unique in the 
 history of Greek eloquence. The speech ends as it 
 began, in a prayer ; but the modest opening bears 
 little likeness to the terror of the final imprecation : — 
 " Never, ye gods, vouchsafe assent to such a prayer ! 
 Rather, if it may be, inspire even these men with a 
 better mind and heart ; but, if they are indeed past 
 healing, bring them, and them alone, to swift and utter 
 ruin by land and sea ; and to us who yet remain grant 
 the speediest release from the terrors that hang over 
 us ; grant us a sure salvation ! " 
 
 The verdict was a decisive defeat for Aeschines, 
 
124 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. vi. 
 
 •Nvho, not obtaining one -fifth of the votes, went into 
 retirement at Rhodes, where he opened a school of 
 rhetoric 
 
 One dark passage in Demosthenes' Hfe, which has 
 cast a shadow over his character, remains to be told. 
 In 324 B.C. Harpalus, the treasurer of Alexander, 
 took flight and appeared before the Pirneus with 
 troops and embezzled treasure. The more vehement 
 patriots were eager to welcome him, and join him in 
 revolt. But ordinary prudence forbade an open 
 breach with Ale.xander ; and on the motion of Demos- 
 thenes the harbour was closed against him. Again 
 he presented himself without his mercenaries, as a 
 refugee and not as a rebel, and this time he was 
 admitted. Presently his surrender was peremptorily 
 demanded by the lieutenants of Alexander. Such 
 compliance, it was felt, would be base ; and Phocion, 
 no less than Demosthenes, resisted the demand. It 
 was resolved, again on the motion of Demosthenes, 
 to detain Harpalus and lodge the gold in the Par- 
 thenon in trust for Alexander. The amount of the 
 treasure was stated by Harpalus previous to his 
 arrest to be 720 talents. The actual sum deposited 
 was found to be 350 talents. What had become of 
 the deficit ? Meantime, however, Harpalus had 
 escaped from prison, and no evidence was forth- 
 coming about the missing treasure. All manner of 
 suspicion was rife, and jiopular excitement ran high. 
 Something must be done to satisfy ])ubHc feelings ; 
 and Demosthenes carried a decree that the Areopagus 
 should investigate the case. It was six months before 
 the Areopagus sent in their report ; nine culprits were 
 named, and Demosthenes headed the list, charged 
 with having received twenty talents. He was pro- 
 secuted, fined fifty talents, and being unable to i)ay 
 was imprisoned. 
 
 Modern opinion has inclined to the view that 
 
CHVP. VI.] PUBLIC LIFE AND SPEECHES. 125 
 
 Demosthenes was not guilty, that he was sacrificed to 
 an alliance between the Macedonian party and the 
 disappointed patriots, such as Hypereides, who were 
 indignant at their cause being, as they thought, be- 
 trayed. The sentence would then, as Grote says, be 
 political, not judicial It must at least be allowed 
 that fable and anecdote have gathered round the 
 charge, which has assumed different and inconsistent 
 shapes. Plutarch's circumstantial account {JDem. ch. 1 5 ) 
 is the best known, and the least credible. No allusion 
 to it is found in the speeches of Hypereides and Dein- 
 archus for the prosecution ; the story appears in various 
 versions, and is in part connected with the name not of 
 Demosthenes but of Demades. The materials for a 
 final decision are wanting. Anecdote apart, the main 
 fact with which we have to deal is the verdict of the 
 Areopagus. Not even to save a great man's character 
 may we lightly set aside their deliberate judgment. 
 The Areopagus still retained their ancient fame for 
 austere impartiality. In this very case their authority 
 was such that the court seems to have required no 
 further evidence for the facts than their report ; it 
 only remained to pass sentence. But it is said, at 
 what moment can Demosthenes have been corrupted? 
 Not, it is argued, before the arrest of Harpalus, for 
 up to that point he opposed Harpalus ; not after 
 the arrest, for Harpalus had no longer control of 
 the treasure. But we must not overlook the moment 
 when Demosthenes resisted the immediate surrender 
 of Harpalus ; the reprieve so gained afforded ample 
 ground for gratitude.^ 
 
 Now, supposing that Demosthenes did, as the 
 Areopagus affirmed, " receive twenty talents from 
 Harpalus," he is not yet convicted of bribery in its 
 worst sense. The Greek distinction between re- 
 
 st sense. ine ureeK aistmction oetween re- 
 
 Nor is it unlikely that Demosthenes may have also promised 
 annive at the prisoner's escape. 
 
126 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. vi. 
 
 ceiving money for, and against, the interests of the 
 state is here important (p. 12), There is nothing 
 in the events as they are narrated to show that 
 Demosthenes served his own private ends or sold the 
 pubhc interests. At each stage of the proceedings his 
 counsel was wise and patriotic ; and indeed his whole 
 career refutes the notion that either his speech or 
 his silence could be bought Yet he was often 
 obliged to engage in dubious transactions for pur- 
 poses of state. Many of his greatest diplomatic 
 services could not have been effected otherwise ; in 
 recent years he had not scrupled to aid the revolt of 
 Thebes with Persian gold; but his enemies in all cases 
 charged him with vulgar bribery. In the affair of 
 Harpalus his conduct may admit of similar explan- 
 ation. War at present he saw would be folly ; yet 
 he looked forAvard to a national resistance which 
 would tax all the resources of Athens. He had hinted 
 to the people at a day when they might have to melt 
 down their women's ornaments, their precious vessels, 
 and the temple offerings {Dcinaich.^^iu'fisf Z>f>/i. § 69). 
 The sum of twenty talents may seem but a small nucleus 
 for a war -fund, yet it may have been accepted as a 
 pledge of future bounties. If such were his projects, 
 secrecy was essential ; he must at all hazards disclaim 
 the gift. On this view he stands acquitted of per- 
 sonal cupidity ; and though his conduct will not bear 
 to be tried by a high standard, yet the morality of 
 the day would not have condemned it. 
 
 Demosthenes escaped from prison and went into 
 exile. " On the shores of Troezen and Aegina," says 
 Plutarch, " he might often be seen sitting, and gazing 
 with tearful eyes towards Attica." But in 323 rc. 
 Alexander died, and Greece made one more effort, 
 worthy of her best days, to shake off the yoke. 
 Under Leosthenes, a skilful general, the Lamian war 
 opened brilliantly. Demosthenes, now reconciled to 
 
CHAP. VI.] PUBLIC LIFE AND SPEECHES. 127 
 
 Hypereides, joined the envoys to the Peloponnese, 
 and aided the movement with all his eloquence. A 
 motion for his recal was soon carried at Athens. 
 His return was a triumph. A galley was sent to 
 Aegina to fetch him ; from the Piraeus a procession, 
 headed by archons and priests, escorted him to 
 the city. 
 
 The joy was of short duration. The battle of 
 Crannon (322 B.C.) crushed the hopes of Greece. 
 The Athenians had to admit a Macedonian garrison, 
 to remodel their constitution, and to give up their 
 leading orators. Demades carried in the Assembly a 
 decree condemning Demosthenes and Hypereides to 
 death. 
 
 Demosthenes had already quitted Athens ; his pur- 
 suers found him seeking refuge in the temple of 
 Poseidon in Calauria. Archias, who had once been 
 an actor, was the agent hired by Antipater to hunt 
 down the fugitives. At first he tried with soft per- 
 suasions to tempt forth Demosthenes from his asylum. 
 Demosthenes, who was seated near the door, looked 
 up and said, " Archias, you never won me by your 
 acting, nor will you now win me by your promises." 
 Angry threats now took the place of promises. 
 " Now," said Demosthenes, " you speak like the 
 Macedonian oracle : before you were only acting. 
 Wait a moment till I AVTite a word to my friends at 
 home." He then went into the inner part of the 
 temple, took out a roll, and putting the pen to his 
 mouth bit it, as was his manner when writing. Soon 
 he felt the poison he had sucked beginning to work ; 
 and throwing back the covering he had wrapped 
 about his head, fixed his eyes on Archias, and said, 
 " The sooner now you play the part of Creon in 
 the tragedy and cast forth this body unburied, the 
 better. But I, gracious Poseidon, quit thy temple 
 while yet I livej as for Antipater and the Mace- 
 
128 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. vr. 
 
 donians, they have not spared even thy sanctuary 
 from defilement." He tottered forward, and, as he 
 had just passed the altar, fell with a groan and yielded 
 up his life (Plutarch Dem. ch. 30). 
 
 Demosthenes died at the age of sixty-two (322 B.C.) 
 " It was on the sixteenth day," adds Plutarch, " of the 
 month Pyanepsion, the saddest day of the feast of the 
 Thesmophoria, which the women celebrate with fast- 
 ing in the temple of the goddess." Forty years later 
 the Athenians set up a bronze statue of the orator, and 
 decreed that the eldest of his family should have 
 public maintenance for ever in the Prytaneum. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 HIS PRIVATE SPEECHES. 
 
 Aristotle notes among the differences between the 
 forensic and deUberative types of eloquence, that the 
 deUberative style gives less scope for chicanery, and 
 admits fewer digressions and personalities, less of in- 
 vective and emotional appeal. So, too, Dionysius 
 says that the audience of a law-court require gUtter 
 and entrancement, while for the Assembly there is 
 need of exposition and help. These distinctions 
 might be fully illustrated from Demosthenes. No- 
 where in the speeches he addressed to the Assembly 
 does he, when denouncing a corrupt system, even 
 mention an opponent by name. But his court 
 speeches descend to scurrilous personalities. Espe- 
 cially in public causes his invective is intemperate ; 
 political animosities, that had been suppressed in 
 serious debate, here find free expression. " I hate 
 these men," is the passionate avowal of Demosthenes 
 {E>nbass. § 223). Speeches such as those O/i the 
 Civivn and On the Embassy^ where there is a blending 
 of the deliberative and the judicial element, show the 
 most abrupt contrasts — grave statesmanlike counsel 
 alternating with low abuse. Demosthenes spoke, no 
 doubt, in bitter earnest ; yet we must not measure 
 his feelings by the violence of his language. Cari- 
 K 
 
I30 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. vii. 
 
 cature was an understood part of judicial eloquence, 
 as it was of the old Attic comedy. To attack 
 a man's private life, his origin, his family, or his 
 friends, was an accepted form. If it were omitted, 
 the jury would probably feel themselves defrauded. 
 In private causes invective was kept within bounds, 
 but ample room was still left for falsehood and e.xag- 
 geration. Yet we have not any reason to think that 
 the scandals, which were welcomed as a seasoning to 
 discourse, appreciably affected the verdict. 
 
 But the Athenians were also connoisseurs in fine 
 language, and their artistic sense had to be satisfied. 
 It was urged against one of Demosthenes' clients 
 that he was an objectionable fellow, who walked fast 
 and talked loud. He pleads guilty, but offers an 
 apology ; " it is nature's doing," he says, " and it can- 
 not be undone ; if it could, there would be nothing to 
 distinguish between man and man " {Ai^ainst Pantcen. 
 §§ 52-56). If the jury were not disposed to be 
 lenient to clumsiness and ugliness, still less could 
 they tolerate ungraceful speech. Demosthenes saw 
 that these fastidious critics must be charmed in order 
 to be won. So he concedes much to them ; he goes 
 beyond his practice in the Assembly ; for though the 
 deliberative speeches, too, cost him minute artistic 
 toil, yet in them there is no phrase, no word, that is 
 not pertinent to the subject ; no ornament for its own 
 sake ; all is subordinated to a serious practical end. 
 But in the forensic speeches there are occasionally 
 lively digressions, racy fictions, and displays of power, 
 whose main object is to please. 
 
 The Athenian theory of citizenship required each 
 man to si)eak in his own cause. His public duties, 
 whether in the army, in the Assembly, or in the law- 
 courts, were exercised by himself, and not through 
 another. The custom had a remarkable eflect on 
 Greek forensic orator)', and made it widely different 
 
CHAP, vii.] PRIVATE SPEECHES. 131 
 
 both from the Roman and from the English type. 
 The unlettered peasant or the busy tradesman, in 
 going to law, would originally apply to some more 
 learned friend, who would advise him and probably 
 give him the sketch of a speech. Gradually, as elo- 
 quence became an art, a class of professional speech- 
 writers grew up towards the end of the fifth century. 
 They were called " logographers," and in their hands 
 Attic oratory was moulded. They seldom appeared 
 in court ; when they did speak for a client, it was by 
 grace of the court they spoke, not as advocates proper, 
 but as friends of the litigant. The litigant himself was 
 bound first to say something on his own behalf He 
 might then, after a few w^ords, beg leave to call on 
 some more capable person to put his case ; he him- 
 self was too inexperienced, he had weak health or 
 some other defect. As a rule, however, the logo- 
 grapher's work was limited to giving legal advice and 
 to writing a speech for the client to deliver ; and he 
 was employed chiefly in civil cases. Part of his art 
 w^as to remain undetected, to assume the character 
 and catch the tone of each client in turn, to feign the 
 embarrassment of one who finds himself unexpectedly 
 in a law-court, to seem to be improvising as he goes 
 on. He must hide the compass of his own resources, 
 and not let the jury suspect the presence of a paid 
 expert. If a minute knowledge of law is shown, it 
 must appear to have been merely got up for the 
 occasion. Such a speech will be brief, for it has to 
 be learnt by heart by one who is not a trained 
 speaker ; its idiom will be that of daily life ; it will 
 be simple in structure and free from artifice. Its 
 persuasive force will be due to clear and vivid narra- 
 tive rather than to ingenious argument. The more 
 impetuous movements of oratory will be avoided, as 
 likely to put the jury on their guard and so destroy the 
 illusion. The feelings will be moved not so much 
 
132 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. vii. 
 
 by express appeals as by an air of truthfulness and 
 candour. 
 
 This form of dramatised speech-writing was brought 
 to perfection by Lysias. But the legal fiction that 
 the si^eaker was his own advocate was daily becoming 
 more transparent. Isa^us at times threw off the dis- 
 guise and wTOte openly as a master. Demosthenes 
 proceeded farther in the direction of Isjeus, We 
 have already seen (p. 31) that the speeches he com- 
 posed for others to deliver in public causes are in 
 truth political orations, enforcing his own views and 
 expressed in his own language. He wTites without 
 fear and without reser\-e, the more so that he wTites 
 as an anonymous author. His tone is that of the 
 statesman, not of the logographer. How a client 
 managed to learn a speech so elaborate as, for instance, 
 the speech Against An'sfocrates, is a matter for wonder; 
 and we may suspect that there were large omissions 
 in delivery. But the greater number of the court 
 speeches, being of a purely private character, are 
 brief and comparatively straight for\vard. It is true 
 that here also he made little effort to sustain the 
 character of the speaker. These speeches, all but 
 two, are written for plaintiffs, not for defendants ; and 
 the militant energy of Demosthenes' genius inclined 
 him to put forth all his strength and skill in attack. 
 He comes into the combat as an athlete armed at all 
 points ; guileless simplicity is in him a forced attitude. 
 He knows the laws intimately and disengages their 
 principles ; he examines and discusses evidence in a 
 searching manner which makes it impossible to mis- 
 take him for the " plain man " ; he grapples with an 
 opponent in strenuous argument, he forestalls objec- 
 tions and leaves no escape. The sober colouring of 
 Lysias has been warmed into a more glowing tint ; 
 there is a quickened life, a more resonant tone, greater 
 variety and passion. The latest private speeches, 
 
CHAr. VII.] PRIVATE SPEECHES. 133 
 
 in their phrase and in the structure of their periods, 
 approach nearly to the dehberative harangues. 
 
 In a few instances, however, Demosthenes is care- 
 ful to observe dramatic proprieties, and his skilful 
 portraiture then falls little, if at all, below that of 
 Lysias. Such is the speech Against Conon, where 
 the action is one for assault and battery, the plaintiff 
 Ariston being Demosthenes' client. It opens with a 
 vivid picture of camp life on the Attic frontier. 
 Ariston was there on garrison duty together with the 
 defendant's sons, who spent the afternoon in drinking 
 and the evening in playing drunken pranks. Ariston, 
 whose tent happened to be pitched near theirs, was 
 the chief sufferer. He and his messmates at last laid 
 a complaint before the general. A severe reprimand 
 was administered, but on that very evening the young 
 men made an outrageous attack on Ariston, almost 
 ending in bloodshed. The quarrel bred in the camp 
 was carried to the city. One evening as Ariston was 
 taking his usual walk in the Agora with a friend, 
 Ctesias, son of Conon, caught sight of him, raised a 
 shout, and instantly disappeared into a house where 
 a drinking -party was going on. The guests issued 
 forth, and presently encountered Ariston in the street; 
 and, while some of them held the friend, Conon and 
 his son tripped up Ariston, plunged him in the mud, 
 jumped on him and kicked him so violently that his 
 lip was cut through and his eyes closed up. Conon 
 then crowed over his prostrate foe, in imitation of a 
 victorious fighting cock, while his comrades bade him 
 do the flapping of the wings with his elbows. The 
 bruises brought on a long illness in which Ariston 
 was at the point of death. The defendant tried to 
 laugh it off as a practical joke. " Ah," says Ariston 
 to the jury, " but you would have found it no laughing 
 matter if you had been present when I was dragged, 
 and stripped, and kicked, and after leaving my house 
 
134 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. vii. 
 
 quite well was borne home on a litter ; when my 
 mother rushed out, and the women cried and wailed 
 as if there had been a death in the house, so that 
 some of the neighbours sent to ask what had hap- 
 pened " (§ 20). Conon himself in his younger days 
 had belonged to a kind of " Mohawk Club," called 
 after a Thracian tribe, "The Triballi." His sons 
 were members of a similar society, which is graphic- 
 ally described (§§ 34, 35). 
 
 The whole story is told and commented on with 
 exquisite grace. The tone is that of a middle-aged 
 man of i:)recise habits, who knows little law, and 
 would have known less had it not been for the 
 defendant ; anxious to seem calm, but not quite able 
 to smother his indignation ; a little wanting in a sense 
 of the ludicrous, and so keenly alive to his own re- 
 spectability — which is a recurring topic — that he 
 must ai)ologise for being aware that such rowdyism 
 even exists — an admirable butt, we may imagine, for 
 members of a Mohawk Club out on a campaign. 
 
 A\'c now pass to another speech (In reply to Cal- 
 licles), less perfect in form than the last, but almost 
 as dramatic, and marked by touches of naive humour. 
 The opening words are these : " Well, Athenians, 
 there really is no greater nuisance than a bad and 
 grasi)ing neighbour, as I myself have had the luck to 
 find out." This somewhat j^ettish, impatient tone, 
 quite in keeping with the young defendant's character, 
 is sustained throughout. The plaintiff, Callicles, and 
 the defendant held adjacent mountain farms, sepa- 
 rated only by the road. The present action is one for 
 damages, caused by the stopjiage of a watercourse, 
 which used, Callicles alleges, to pass through the 
 defendant's land. The defendant's fiither, however, 
 had built a wall and diverted the water into the road; 
 hence there was an overflow, and Callicles' farm was 
 flooded. On the other hand, the defendant contends 
 
CHAP. VII.] PRIVATE SPEECHES. 135 
 
 that tlie wall was built more than fifteen years before 
 his father died, and no objection had been raised at 
 the time, " though, of course, there was often rain 
 then as well as now " (§ 4) ; that the enclosed land 
 was not part of a watercourse, but private property 
 long ago planted with vines and figs and other trees, 
 and containing a family burial-ground. " Who would 
 plant trees in a watercourse ? Or who would bury his 
 ancestors there?" (§13). The stream, too, did not come 
 down from a neighbour's land and pass out into the 
 next neighbour's land ; it flowed down the road both 
 above and below him. Why then divert it ? Who ever 
 heard of a watercourse by the side of a road ? The 
 public road is its proper channel. (This quite seri- 
 ously, for a road in Greece was and is often the bed of 
 a torrent.) Nor would his next neighbour below thank 
 him if he were to turn the water into his land. " If 
 then," he says, " I may not drain it off either into the 
 road or into private ground, in heaven's name, gentle- 
 men, tell me what am I to do ? Callicles, surely, won't 
 compel me to drink it up" (§ 13). If all who suffered 
 from excess of water in those parts were to go to law 
 with him about it, his fortune would need to be many 
 times greater than it was in order to stand it. But, 
 as the plaintiff's mother had let out, there was little 
 harm done, though there was much lamentation ; a 
 few bushels of barley had got wet, and an oil-jar had 
 been upset without being damaged. The truth was, 
 Callicles coveted his neighbour's farm ; that was the 
 secret of his litigation. " In going to law with me," 
 says the defendant, " I hold him to be a thoroughly 
 abandoned and benighted man" (§ 13). 
 
 Among the most powerful and persuasive of the 
 private speeches is the speech For Phormio, who was 
 at this time head of the chief banking house at Athens, 
 He had been first foreman to Pasion, the founder of 
 the firm, and afterwards his successor. ApoUodorus, 
 
136 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. vii. 
 
 Pasion's elder son, who distinguished himself by a 
 spendthrift and ambitious generosity, and was now 
 in a financially desperate case, put in a claim against 
 Phormio for a certain sum of banking stock supposed 
 to be due to him under Pasion's will. On Phormio's 
 behalf it is pleaded that several years ago a com- 
 promise had t een made extinguishing all claims, and 
 that this compromise was a legal bar to the present 
 action. Further, ApoUodorus' whole story is shoAvn to 
 be without foundation. The jury were so completely 
 convinced of the justice of Phormio's case, that they 
 would hardly give ApoUodorus a hearing in reply. 
 
 Apart from the great merit of the speech, it ought 
 to be read for a certain painful interest it has acquired. 
 U'aken in conjunction with the first speech Against 
 StepJianus, it is supposed to reflect gravely on the 
 character of Demosthenes. The latter speech, whose 
 genuineness could hardly have been doubted but for 
 the desire to vindicate the orator's morality, is written 
 for ApoUodorus in a suit he brought against Stephanus 
 for giving false witness in the Phormio case. Thus 
 Demosthenes, as is thought, acted dishonourably in 
 pleading on opposite sides. 
 
 The charge, however, against him appears in some- 
 what different shapes. Aeschines accuses him of 
 having communicated beforehand to ApoUodorus a 
 speech he had been paid to write for Phormio (Aesch. 
 £»il}. § 165). Plutarch merely says that he wrote 
 speeches for and against ApoUodorus in his quarrel 
 with Phormio ; that it was like selling two swords 
 from the same workshop to be used on opposite sides 
 {Life pf Dem. ch. 15). Aeschines no doubt, as usual, 
 sets his rival's conduct in the darkest light, while 
 Plutarch's version of the stor}' is borne out by the 
 speeches as they have come down to us, and has a 
 better claim to accci)tance. The morality of Demos- 
 thenes' conduct may in this case perhaps be dubious. 
 
CHAP. VII.] PRIVATE SPEECHES. 137 
 
 but it is not so palpably bad as has been supposed. 
 The " logographer " must be kept distinct from the 
 modern advocate. He entered into a far less binding 
 relation with his client ; he did not appear for him 
 and in his stead ; he held no responsible office and 
 took no public part in the proceedings. Nor did he 
 belong to any corporate society, among whom there 
 existed a clear code of etiquette and of honour. He 
 was an anonymous wTiter, making his livelihood by 
 his pen. Moreover, the actual charge against Demos- 
 thenes is not that he wrote speeches on opposite sides 
 in the same suit, but in successive suits, one of which 
 arose out of the other. Even an English barrister, 
 under such circumstances, could not well refuse to 
 take a brief against a former client, supposing that the 
 client had not retained his services in the second suit. 
 Yet the outside public would probably be a little 
 shocked at "lawyers' morality." The case was an 
 exceptional one at Athens, as it is now, and attracted 
 the more attention since it involved a well-known 
 name. But there was an uglier side to the matter. 
 In the second trial Demosthenes maintains that 
 Stephanus, who was called as a witness for his client 
 in the first trial, was guilty of perjury. Also, he 
 attacks his late client's character with a coarse violence 
 and a wantonness which goes beyond the conventional 
 invective of the law-courts. He writes for Apollodorus 
 as Apollodorus would have written himself, not sparing 
 even the speaker's own mother. And it is precisely 
 here rather than in the change of sides that we feel 
 the real discredit lies. 
 
 It has been ingeniously suggested that political 
 causes brought about a union at this time between 
 Demosthenes and Apollodorus. The date of the first 
 speech Against Stephanus is the end of 349 B.C. or 
 the beginning of 348 b.c. It was early in 348 B.C. 
 that Apollodorus, at a critical moment, aided Demos- 
 
138 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. vii. 
 
 thenes' policy by making a tentative proposal, at the 
 risk of his civic rights, in relation to the Festival Fund 
 (P- 75)- Ori such terms, perhaps, did Demosthenes 
 consent to support him in his lawsuit. 
 
 One argument of some weight may be alleged against 
 the genuineness of the first speech A}:;ainst Stcp/ianus. 
 Seven speeches delivered by Apollodorus have come 
 down to us among the works of Demosthenes. Two 
 of these (Aga/f/sf Callippus and Against Nicostratus) 
 would seem, on internal chronological evidence, to 
 have been spoken before Demosthenes' suit with his 
 guardians had even begun, and one of them (Against 
 Timot/ieus) before it was concluded. This, then, 
 would be a decisive reason for rejecting them. A 
 certain presumption, it may be said, is thus raised 
 against the remaining speeches for Apollodorus ; the 
 author of the three speeches just mentioned was prob- 
 ably the author of all. And, it is urged, we can further 
 account for the reception of these spurious speeches 
 among the collected works of Demosthenes ; for this 
 collection (made at Alexandria by Callimachus) was 
 based on no critical recension ; it embraced such 
 anonymous wTitings as had any obvious bearing upon 
 Demosthenic speeches, and was not intended to pre- 
 judge the question of genuineness. Thus, it is said, 
 the speeches for Apollodorus came to be inserted as 
 the companion speeches to that written For Phormio 
 against Apollodorus. 
 
 But another view is also possible. We may assume 
 the first speech Against Stephanus to be the work of 
 Demosthenes — a speech with marked Demosthenic 
 qualities, and about which no doubt was raised in 
 antiquity — and yet not accept all or any of the other 
 speeches written for Apollodorus ; for, reasoning as 
 before, we may urge that the admission of a single 
 genuine speech would naturally bring with it into the 
 collection other doubtful or spurious speeches written 
 
CHAP, vii.] PRIVATE SPEECHES. 139 
 
 in the same client's behalf. And in fact such would 
 seem to have been the view of those ancient critics 
 who rejected some, but not all, of the speeches for 
 Apollodorus. 
 
 Much of the literary criticism which in recent times 
 has undertaken to discriminate between genuine and 
 spurious works of Demosthenes rests on no solid basis. 
 The evidence of style alone is most uncertain, and 
 authorities here differ as much as in the detection of 
 Homeric interpolations. We may grant in certain 
 speeches that there are rhythmical irregularities, and 
 a want of finish in the phrase, without on that account 
 rejecting the speeches themselves. Demosthenes did 
 not always put forth his whole strength in unimpor- 
 tant court speeches, or add the last touch to what he 
 ^^TOle. The very carelessness which is thought suspi- 
 cious may sometimes be dramatically appropriate to 
 the speaker. The safest course for moderns is not 
 to reject, on purely stylistic grounds, such speeches as 
 were pronounced genuine by Dionysius, whose delicate 
 perception of Greek idiom we can never hope to equal. 
 Some few speeches, however, may on other grounds 
 be pronounced rhetorical forgeries, being vague and 
 declamatory, wanting in coherence and historical pre- 
 cision ; and in such cases modern historical criticism 
 has generally borne out the literary doubts of Dionysius. 
 But by far the greater number of the private speeches 
 which go by the name of Demosthenes are written, if 
 not by him, by some of his contemporaries,^ and are 
 authentic records of the period to which they profess 
 to belong. Their actual authorship matters but little. 
 Their chief value lies in this — that they contain de- 
 
 ^ The speeches written by a logographer seem to have become 
 the property of the cHent for whom they were written ; and such 
 floating compositions were easily attached to famous names. 
 This is one reason why the court speeches are more doubtful than 
 the rest. 
 
140 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. vii. 
 
 tailed information on Attic law, and reflect every phase 
 of social and mercantile life in the fourth century b.c 
 It would be interesting to know whether Demos- 
 thenes pursued the work of a logographer throughout 
 his life. It is clear that during the years of his 
 political leadership, and when his influence was at its 
 height, he took very little part in private lawsuits. 
 The latest of his undoubtedly genuine private speeches 
 {Against Pantcenctus) falls between the speech On the 
 Peace (346 B.C.) and the Second Philippic (344 B.C.) 
 But if the speeches Against Phcenippus, Against 
 Phormio, and Against Dionysodorus^ are also his, it 
 would seem that, after the accession of Alexander, 
 and the more definite triumph of Macedon, he took 
 refuge from an enforced political inaction in the 
 employment of his younger days. But the point is 
 one which must remain uncertain unless these ve.xed 
 questions of authorship can be finally solved 
 
 ^y 
 
i 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 DEMOSTHENES AS A STATESMAN AND AN ORATOR. 
 
 We may now form some general estimate of Demos- 
 thenes. Unlike Cicero, he is known to us only as a 
 citizen, not as a man. His speeches, great in their 
 self-forgetfulness, reveal next to nothing of his private 
 life, and the few letters which have come down under 
 his name, even if we admit them to be genuine — a 
 most doubtful supposition — are, with one exception, 
 public documents addressed to the Council and people 
 of Athens. Even his private correspondence, if it 
 existed, would not, we may be sure, be marked by the 
 candid confidences and genial humour which in Cicero 
 are so fascinating. In that grave and unbending 
 nature, to which politics were an absorbing passion, 
 there was little room for domestic affections or for the 
 play of the social instincts. Yet it is a mistake to 
 think of him solely as the author of Philippics, or to 
 allow the main episode to obscure the life. It was 
 not the struggle with Macedon that gave a bent and a 
 purpose to his thoughts. From the outset it was his 
 aim to revive public spirit in Athens, to purify the 
 home administration, to bring vigour into the conduct 
 of foreign affairs. Before Philip was seen to be a 
 dangerous antagonist the organic lines of his policy 
 had been traced. 
 
142 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. viii. 
 
 But while his career is stamped by an essential 
 unity, a gradual enlargement of view is visible. From 
 the first we find Athens standing out before him as a 
 living personality with a well-defined character (to tt}? 
 TToAews ?jBos, Lepf. § 13, Timocr. § 171). Certain 
 features disengaged themselves at once, generous qualities 
 such as were the birthright of a noble well-bred people, 
 disinterestedness, magnanimity, pity for the oppressed, 
 a delicate and scrupulous honour. He had studied 
 the history of Athens and gathered from it all that 
 was noblest in her past, uniting the elements in an 
 ideal portrait which became to him henceforth a 
 power that moved his imagination and controlled his 
 reason. This portrait of national character he set 
 
 ( before his countrymen as an object of loving imitation. 
 Athens must identify herself with her best moments, 
 and be made to feel that she was never more 
 truly herself than when at her grandest. The dor- 
 mant feelings of patriotism and self-respect must be 
 elicited. Instinct must be developed into virtue. 
 
 Demosthenes was always free from the narrow pre- 
 judices of an Athenian. In his later life he was 
 
 J accused by Aeschines of Boeotian sympathies ; and in 
 his first popular harangue {On the Synunories, ^ Z2)) 
 I his tone towards Thebes, then an object of bitter 
 hatred, is strikingly temperate. In the same speech 
 (§ 6) he declares the exceptional obligations of Athens 
 towards Greece at large, and marks the limit thus 
 imposed upon her private vengeance. The part of 
 
 /^ Athens in the speech For ihc Mc<:;alopoUtans (p. 40) 
 is to deliver the oppressed (§§ 14, 15): "Circum- 
 stances may change with changing ambitions, but 
 the policy of Athens is the same." But generous 
 instincts are not as yet perfectly harmonised with 
 other motives. The principle most insisted on in 
 
 / the speech For the JMei^alopoHtans is that of the 
 balance of power (cf. Aristocr. §§ 102 {{.), and in 
 
CHAP. VIII.] STATESMAN AND ORATOR. 143 
 
 the speech For the Rhodians the claims of democracy 
 against oligarchy are the decisive consideration. 
 1' In the early Philippics and OlyiitJiiacs the sense of 
 ' Athenian interests is still dominant. But after the 
 taking of Olynthus the Hellenic character of the 
 struggle became daily more manifest, and Demos- 
 thenes' view was enlarged with the growing dimensions 
 of the danger. The Athenian was sunk in the Hellene. 
 Starting from appeals to self-interest, he passed into 
 another region ; insensibly he led up from the men- 
 aced independence of Athens to the vision of a death- 
 struggle between barbarism and Hellenism, between 
 lawless aggression on the one side and dignified 
 freedom on the other. Athens was bound to take 
 up the championship of Greece, apart from her own 
 safety or selfish advantage. The tone of The Croioti 
 is not adopted by Demosthenes to vindicate a policy 
 which had failed. It is anticipated by a statement 
 scarcely less empathic in the speech On the Cher- 
 sonese (§ 49 ; quoted p. 104) : it is the settled convic- 
 tion of the Third Philippic. We have seen how in 
 the next two years he was able to elevate his hearers, 
 both in Athens and outside it, to a similar height 
 of national devotion. It was his part to overcome 
 ( petty jealousies, to blot out old scores by acts of con- 
 \ ciliation towards Euboeans, Thebans, and Byzantines ; 
 ' to deprecate the insistance on strict rights. In each 
 state he appealed to what there was of best in the 
 local traditions. " He reminded," says Plutarch, " the 
 Thebans of Epaminondas, and the Athenians of 
 Pericles." The triumph of this high-minded policy 
 was attained in the famous embassy to Thebes and 
 the union of the cities before Chaeronea. The gener- 
 ous spirit of Demosthenes was censured by his rival. 
 It was alien to the practical politicians of the day, 
 and it hardly finds expression elsewhere within the 
 range of Attic oratory. 
 
144 DEMOSTHENES. [ciiap. viii. 
 
 Thus had his character developed as doom closed 
 round the city. He had learned to look on the 
 
 / cause of Athens as one with the cause of Greece. 
 His eari^ and instinctive admiration of all that was 
 generous in conduct meets us again in T/ie Crown, in 
 a reasoned defence of Athenian magnanimity (§§ 95- 
 100, § 238 fT.) The first of these passages is pre- 
 
 liaced with the words : " Communities, like individuals, 
 
 ^ should ever strive to mould their future by the noblest 
 chapters of their past." These "noblest chapters," 
 of Athenian history, as he interpreted them, were 
 moments inspired by a high enthusiasm that disre- 
 garded vulgar expediency. The level of Panhel- 
 lenic patriotism attained by Demosthenes was higher 
 than was reached by Pericles, and was equalled, if 
 at all, by Epaminondas alone. 
 
 <( On the study of Thucydides Demosthenes had 
 been nourished. Apart from such legendary anec- 
 dotes as that he copied out Thucydides eight times, 
 there is ample evidence, in spite of few direct imita- 
 tions or verbal reminiscences, that he was penetrated 
 by the thought of the historain. He had learnt from 
 
 i' Thucydides that events are the outcome of character; 
 that they are not startling or dramatic incidents, the 
 work of an arbitrary will, but phenomena whose reason 
 lies deep in the moral disposition of nations and indi- 
 viduals, and the law of whose succession can be dis- 
 covered. Such a view, akin to that which Sophocles 
 embodied in poetry, was applied in his own field by 
 Thucydides with such a penetrating analysis of mo- 
 tives as to make of history a new science. To observe 
 
 I character, and especially the broad lines of national 
 
 I character, under such a master, became a great train- 
 ing in politics. A searching inquiry into real causes 
 is as distinctive of the orator as it is of the historian. 
 ] )emoslhenes will not be jnit off with illusions or 
 superficial explanations, he nuist trace back external 
 
cilAr. viii.] STATESMAN AND ORATOR. 145 
 
 events to their hidden source. Character with him is 
 all in all. His first political speech exhibits this 
 thought already formed {On the Synnnorics, §§ 14, 15, 
 p. 37) ; every Philippic is instinct with it. " Is Philip 
 dead % No, he is only ill. Dead or ill, what differ- 
 ence to you? If anything befalls him, you will 
 instantly raise up another Philip for yourselves" 
 {Phil. i. § 17). Again, it was the speeches of Thucy- 
 dides that first taught him what a luminous force is 
 
 padded to debate by attaching facts to their principles, 
 and by combining particular with general ideas ; al- 
 though, in the application of the discovery, he followed 
 his own method. From Thucydides he learnt that 
 
 X mastery is assured to calm intelligence backed up by 
 sustained and vigorous effort ; and that speech is of 
 1 value only so far as it contains in it the promise and 
 potency of action. Before undertaking to interpret 
 Athenian history, and to read Athenian character, 
 he had trained his political reason in the most fortify- 
 ing study that ancient literature afforded. 
 
 The influence, however, upon him of his elder con- 
 temporaries was not insignificant. Subsequent tradi- 
 tion loved to tell how he had been the pupil of Plato 
 and of Isocrates, a tradition w^iolly unsupported by 
 evidence, and an instance of the perpetual attempt to 
 affiliate great men together as master and pupil. At 
 first sight we may see nothing but contrast between 
 the strenuous and robust eloquence of Demosthenes, 
 wath its face set towards action — an eloquence in which 
 reason was vivified by contact with passion — and the 
 dreamy splendour of Isocrates, who wrote from his 
 study, spending ten years in publishing a pamphlet, 
 while events had outstripped his pen ; who w^as neither 
 philosopher nor politician, but had an unsteady foot 
 in either world. Or again, Plato drawing up the con- 
 stitution of his ideal city, what had he to do with 
 Demosthenes, whose thoughts were centred in Athens, 
 
 L 
 
146 DEMOSTHENES. [cii.u>. viii. 
 
 who, in no wise blind to her faults and failures, found 
 in her a city with a great part to play, and with noble 
 traditions to be reanimated? 
 
 Yet these men, differing widely in opinions, held 
 
 f certain principles in common. Demosthenes owed to 
 Plato and to Isocrates the idea that ethical motives 
 ought to be introduced into the life of states, that 
 political morality has a serious meaning. Isocrates 
 sought to raise the dignity of eloquence by applying 
 it, not to trivial themes, but to serious political discus- 
 sion, and by giving it a moral content The rules of 
 Iprivate conduct were, he held, applicable to states ; 
 justice was for the interest of nations as well as of 
 individuals, and was even more binding on nations "by 
 reason of their immortality" {Peace, § 120). Shortly 
 before the birth of Demosthenes he began to set forth 
 these views ; but his passionless homilies fell on inat- 
 tentive ears. It needed a stronger thought and a 
 living voice to convert such abstract principles into 
 truths which could shape action. Demosthenes was 
 able, as Isocrates was not, to draw on the ideal world 
 without ever losing sight of the real. The fusion he 
 effected between morals and politics admits of many 
 illustrations ; a few instances may here be given. 
 In the political organism he saw a moral institution. 
 
 i\ To him, as to Plato, democracy reflected character, 
 and was among the influences by which character was 
 moulded. But they estimated its worth very differ- 
 ently. To Plato it denoted, first, a form of govern- 
 ment under which each man did what was right in his 
 own eyes ; next, a state of the soul in which there was 
 no eciuilibrium of forces, no sovereign and controlling 
 power. Now, Demosthenes is aware that democracy 
 is in a peculiar sense liable to fall under the sway of 
 passion, and he therefore insists on individual virtue 
 as a condition of its existence. Plato thought virtue 
 
 r and democracy an impossible union, for democracy 
 
CHAP. VIII.] STATESMAN AND ORATOR. 147 
 
 implied lawlessness. Demosthenes, on the other 
 r^ hand, held democracy to be the reign of law as op- 
 posed to oligarchy, the reign of caprice {Ti>nocr, §§ 75, 
 76). The idea is not confined to hirn ; but while it 
 occurs elsewhere as a rhetorical commonplace, it is to 
 him a vital and fruitful conception. 
 
 As the state was in his view a moral institution, so 
 the statesman had corresponding functions. This was 
 a doctrine which Plato had made familiar ; but Plato, 
 observing the poor success of statesmen in regenerat- 
 ing mankind, despaired of the commonwealths of 
 earth, and condemned as failures Pericles and all others 
 who had been " bad tamers of wild animals." Demos- 
 thenes, too, demands from the statesmen other quali- 
 Jties besides the intellectual; not only to "see events 
 in their beginnings, to forecast the future, to forewarn 
 others," but also "to limit to the utmost the range of 
 those vices which are inherent in the very idea of a 
 J state, . . . and to promote harmony, kindly feeling, 
 and the impulse towards duty" [Croivn, § 246). The 
 statesman is no mere administrator ; nor, on the other 
 hand, is he a sage or a moraUst, though it is his duty 
 to guide and to enlighten the public conscience. Two 
 conditions are here indispensable. First, he must 
 J( s how a f earless^since^ity. The duty of speaking out 
 the truth at all costs, of not ignoring facts, is laid 
 down in the earliest of his political speeches proper. 
 He conformed faithfully to his own ideal. Plutarch 
 {Life of D €711. ch. xiv.) describes his courage in utter- 
 ing rude truths and withstanding the passions of the 
 people in language which recalls Thucydides' descrip- 
 tion of Pericles (ii. 65, 8). Like Pericles, he was 
 able, as we have seen, to abate an extravagant con- 
 fidence no less than to brighten moments of despair. 
 Constitutionally timid as he probably was, his whole 
 life eloquently refutes Aeschines' charge of cowardice 
 before a crowd. As years go on the figure of the 
 
X 
 
 148 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. viii. 
 
 statesman stands out in his speeches in bold rehef 
 against that of the sycophant. The two portraits are 
 first drawn in The Chersonese (§§ 68-72), and are com- 
 pleted in The Croum (§§ 189 i\.) 
 
 The second requisite in a statesman is a profound 
 sense of responsibility'. Demosihenes frequently 
 applies the words x—cvOwos and evUvvai, which denote 
 the official responsibility of the magistrate, to the 
 moral responsibility of the statesman. Good inten- 
 tions, "of no mean force," as Burke .says, "in the 
 government of mankind," are not enough. A man 
 must form a proper estimate of his own powers. He 
 is not compelled to conduct public business, but 
 having once undertaken it, he may not set up honest 
 incapacity as a plea f(jr failure. Such a plea would 
 be small consolation to ruined allies, and to their 
 wives and children. This is forcibly urged in the 
 speech On the Embassy m 99 ff.) The Croum con- 
 tains the matured expression of the orator's opinion 
 on this head. The responsibility he there accepts is 
 greater even than before : he consents to be judged in 
 the light of the event. Now, however, schooled in 
 hard experience, he recognises more fully the limits 
 of human control over circumstance. If the states- 
 man fails, it must not be through want of foresight, 
 of moral purpose, or of sustained energy. 
 
 The Stoic Panaetius, we are told by Plutarch, 
 declared that " the principle which ajipears in the 
 greater number of the speeches of Demosthenes is, 
 that the honourable (to? ko-Xov) alone is to be chosen 
 for its own sake. This is the principle of The Cnnvn, 
 of the speeches Aa^ainst Aris/ocrahs, Ai^ainst Ltf tines, 
 and of the Philippics. In all of these he seeks to lead 
 his countr)'men not towards that which is most plea- 
 sant, most easy, or most profitable ; he often calls on 
 them to set safely and wellbeing below honour and 
 duty" i^Life of JDiiii., ch. xiii.) Demosthenes, as we 
 
CHAP. VIII.] STATESMAN AND ORATOR, 149 
 
 have seen, maintained that this was the embodiment 
 of the spirit of Athens {e.g. Lept. § 13), and Philip's 
 recognition of the fact was the noblest homage that 
 he could have paid their city {Phil. ii. § 10). The 
 moral elevation of view which distinguishes him is 
 not found in an equal degree in any other orator, so 
 far as I know, except in Burke. It establishes a pro- 
 found inner resemblance between the two men, and 
 produces a unity of thought underlying obvious 
 differences of style. The large and enhghtened 
 wisdom impressed upon their works, running counter 
 to the prejudices of the day, is in a great measure 
 due to this cause. The sentence that sums up the 
 speech on Conciliation with America is conceived in 
 the very spirit of Demosthenes : — " Magnanimity in 
 politics is not seldom the truest wisdom ; and great 
 
 X empires and little minds go ill together." For them 
 no one department of politics stood isolated; each 
 derived its meaning from its relation to the whole. 
 A pervading moral purpose bound together even their 
 occasional utterances. Home and foreign policy were 
 
 r^ to Demosthenes inseparable. He protests against 
 repairing failure abroad by measures which left un- 
 touched the heart of the evil at home. His method 
 was remedial, not palliative. He took in the social, 
 economic, and military bearings of a measure in one 
 view. His trierarchic law (340 B.C.), whose various 
 aspects he himself indicates {Crown, §§ 102-109), 
 achieved at once a reform of the navy, corrected a 
 social grievance, and equalised the burdens upon 
 capital. His scheme for applying the Theoricon to 
 war purposes, carried after a struggle of eleven years 
 (339 B.C.), was another measure of comprehensive 
 scope (cf. pp. 16 ff., 1 1 2). In reviewing his early court 
 speeches {Against Androtion, Against Timocrates), 
 we have seen how out of technicalities of law and 
 details of finance he rises to efforts for purifying 
 
I50 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. viii. 
 
 the administration and reducing corrupt influence. 
 Economic reform was to him, as to Burke, a matter 
 of constitutional and social import (Burke's speech 
 on Economic Reform). One case, primarily economic, 
 is enlarged by him into a matter which touched the 
 very foundations of public morality and expediency. 
 The discussion, raised on the law of Leptines, was 
 whether certain hereditary exemptions granted by the 
 people for distinguished public services should be 
 revoked (p. 33). One part of the argument of 
 Demosthenes is recapitulated in these sentences from 
 the Letter to a Noble Lord on the subject of Burke's 
 pension. " I ever held a scant and penurious justice 
 to partake of the nature of a \sTong. I held it to 
 be in its consequences the worst economy in the 
 world. In saving money I soon can count up all 
 the good I do ; but when by a cold penur)- I blast 
 the abilities of a nation, and stunt the growth of its 
 active energies, the ill I may do is beyond all calcula- 
 tion." Another point still more insisted on by 
 Demosthenes is thus expressed by Burke in an earlier 
 speech in which he is himself advocating retrench- 
 ment : "A critical retrospective examination of the 
 pension list, upon the principle of merit, can never 
 serve for my basis " {On Economic Reform). The 
 views of the two orators on ever)' question of public 
 policy will be found to depend on some principle, 
 and that principle has its root in morals. 
 
 The instability of unrighteous power is thus 
 described by Demosthenes : — " It is not possible, 
 Athenians, it is not possible to found a solid ])ower 
 upon op]ircssion, perjury, and fiilsehood. Such an 
 empire may endure for the moment or for the hour ; 
 nay, it may perhaj:)s blossom with the rich promise of 
 hope ; but time finds it out, and it drops away of 
 itself. As in a house, a vessel, or any similar 
 structure, the foundations should above all be strong. 
 
/ 
 
 ^ 
 
 CHAP. VIII.] STATESMAN AND ORATOR. 151 
 
 SO should the principles and groundwork of conduct 
 rest upon truth and justice" {Olynth. ii. § 10). No 
 bolder assertion of a moral title as the only endur- 
 ing claim to empire is to be found among Burke's 
 denunciations of our rule in India. Similarly in the 
 Leptines (§ 136) the broad command is laid down : 
 " Beware not to exhibit as a nation conduct which 
 you would shrink from as individuals." But Demos- 
 thenes in another passage of the same speech admits 
 that the analogy between the state and the individual 
 is incomplete. The state, for instance, cannot always 
 form friendships on precisely the same grounds as an 
 individual (§ 50). Like Aristotle, he holds that the 
 state may and ought to employ a bad man if he 
 is useful. 
 
 He also sees that there are certain limits which 
 determine the application of moral maxims to inter- 
 national relations. Some reciprocity of ideas is 
 necessary, otherwise the nobler morality may lead to 
 extermination. The rule of force, he points out in the 
 speech For the RJiodians (§§ 29, 30, p. 42), is the exist- 
 ing basis of international law; and Athens cannot take 
 up an isolated and unaccepted standard of morality in 
 the face of unscrupulous enemies. This would be 
 "not justice, but cowardice." Nowhere, however, 
 does he lay down precise rules for the conduct of a 
 state in cases where justice and self-interest are in 
 apparent conflict ; in general he assumes their identity. 
 Yet he recognises that there may be a duty higher 
 than even that of self-preservation ; he holds it to be 
 the proud distinction of Athens that there were 
 moments in her history when, for the sake of Greece 
 and at the imperious call — the dvayKt] — of honour, 
 existence itself was staked. He rebels against the 
 fallacious verdict of outward events. When in T/ie 
 C?vwn he asserts his calm conviction that defeat in a 
 cause so noble was better than victory otherwise 
 
152 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. viii. 
 
 attained, the true discipleship of Plato is revealed. 
 The language is the echo of the Gorgias and the 
 Republic. It may seem near to Stoicism, but the 
 temperate allowance made for human weakness has 
 in it a tenderness that is not stoical 
 
 Demosthenes was naturally averse to a metaphysical 
 
 ' treatment of politics. There is nothing in him of 
 open revolt against the political philosophy of Plato, 
 as there is in Burke against that of Rousseau. Rarely 
 does he delay, as he does for a moment in the Leptines 
 (§ iio), to protest against theorising on a constitu- 
 tional question. Yet his cast of mind was as pro- 
 foundly opposed as that of Burke to all deductive 
 methods, metaphysical or geometric. Burke constantly 
 maintains that political reason computes not by 
 mathematical but on moral principles. To the Duke 
 of Bedford, who took on himself to appraise Burke's 
 political services, and his claim to a pension, he 
 writes thus : " I have no doubt of his Grace's readi- 
 ness, in all the calculations of vulgar arithmetic ; but 
 I shrewdly suspect that he is little studied in the 
 theory of moral proportions, and has never learned 
 
 y the rule of three in the arithmetic of policy and 
 state." We are reminded of Demosthenes' reply to 
 Aeschines, who would estimate his rival's worth in 
 the spirit of a vulgar bookkeeper. The illustration 
 employed by Aeschines seemed to imply that the ser- 
 vices of Demosthenes might be totted up, and his 
 failures set off against them in the ledger, item against 
 item, no regard being had to the quality of the facts 
 compared or the moral value of the results. The 
 reply of Demosthenes amounts to this, that jiolitical 
 calculations cannot be reduced to simple addition. 
 "That Aeschines, however, is not warranted in re- 
 quiring you to alter your estimate, I shall easily show, 
 not by casting up figures — political arithmetic is 
 of a different order — but by a brief enumeration of 
 
CHAP. VIII.] STATESMAN AND ORATOR. 153 
 
 events, while I call on you my hearers at once to 
 audit the account and to attest the facts." Then, after 
 a summary of events, he proceeds : "A striking re- 
 semblance, is there not, between the arithmetic of 
 figures and of facts?" {Crown, §§ 227-231). This 
 may be called Demosthenes' protest against the mathe- 
 ^ matical method. Another passage in the same speech 
 is a virtual protest against it priori principles of any 
 kind being applied to politics. Aeschines had enu- 
 merated the qualifications of a statesman, and trying 
 Demosthenes by this standard had found him wanting. 
 
 L Demosthenes indignantly refuses to be tried by the 
 arbitrary ideal of an opponent. "You draw youlT" 
 ideal," he says, " of the patriotic statesman, just as if 
 ^ you had given a statue to be made by contract, and it 
 was then delivered to you without the points specified 
 in the contract. Or as if statesmen were known by 
 definitions, not by acts and measures " ( Cro2v?z, 
 § 122). 
 
 The method pursued by Demosthenes as by.^giu^e 
 was the historical method. Montesquieu, as its 
 modern founder, won a warm, perhaps an exagger- 
 ated, admiration from Burke ; Thucydides, the philo- 
 sophic historian of antiquity, moulded the mind of 
 Demosthenes. The latter is no doubt guilty of several 
 historical inaccuracies, yet in spite of these he shows 
 a more minute knowledge of history than any other 
 ancient orator, and an infinitely deeper insight into its 
 meaning. Compared to the brilliant and ill-read 
 Aeschines, he may be called a genuine historical 
 student. With this ampler knowledge goes the power 
 ^ of summoning up telling illustrations, which are with 
 him among the most powerful instruments of proof. 
 The examples he takes are often from well-known or 
 recent events, and depend for their force chiefly on 
 the setting (see the Third Philippic). At times he 
 X recalls some slighted chapter of history, and with a few 
 
 X 
 
154 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. viil. 
 
 bold strokes lights up the page. " The time of those 
 events has indeed gone by, but the time for reading 
 the lessons of the past is ever present to the wise " 
 (Crcncn, § 48). Whatever be the allusion, it is free 
 from antiquarian pedantry and has a direct bearing 
 upon the subject in hand. He does not, like Aeschines, 
 support an argument by a reference to a mythical or 
 
 V semi-mythical past. He is always practical and pre- 
 cise, with a strong grasp of the actual. The mastery 
 of fiicts and precedents which he and Burjce display, 
 may have been due in no slight degree to the legal as 
 well as the historical training of the two orators. 
 
 But here comes the notable point, that which dis- 
 tinguishes these two from all other orators and states- 
 men — the close alliance between facts and principles. 
 Not that their method of bringing out principles is 
 
 ^ the same. Burke often expounds them in the manner 
 of a philosopher — the secret of many of his failures in 
 Parliament In Demosthenes the principle gradually 
 
 (k emerges from the facts. It is not supplied as a thing 
 ready made. The orator stimulates and provokes 
 his hearers to reflection ; they and he must reason 
 together till the truth seems to spring from the contact 
 of their minds. As the facts are presented first on 
 one side then on another, the illuminating principle 
 breaks in. It may be stated briefly and even cursorily, 
 but this it is which has vivified the whole. Among 
 the causes which give to the eloquence of Demos- 
 thenes and Burke an enduring value beyond any other 
 clocjuence, ancient or modern, none is to be ranked 
 above this, that a close grappling with detail is found 
 combined with large generalisations from experience 
 and the broad assertion of moral truths. 
 
 Even the personal element in these orators is largely 
 redeemed by being attached to principles. Self-praise 
 rarely in Burke, never, I think, in Demosthenes, be- 
 comes vainglorious. In IVie Cro'wn it is elevated 
 
 t. 
 
CHAr. VIII.] STATESMAN AND ORATOR. 155 
 
 into something resembling a noble profession of faith. 
 The lofty self-assertion of the passage already quoted 
 (p. 106) from the speech On the Chersonese (see 
 especially the later sections), deserves to be placed 
 beside Burke's declaration : " I know the map of 
 England as well as the noble lord or as any other 
 person ; and I know that the way I take is not the 
 way to preferment." Or again, the saying attributed 
 to Demosthenes, when he was called on to undertake 
 an unjust prosecution : " Your counsellor I will always 
 be, even if you wish it not ; a sycophant you shall 
 never find me, even if you wish it " (Plutarch, Deni. 
 ch. xiv.) — this surpasses the utterance of Burke when 
 elected member for Bristol : " Your faithful friend, 
 your devoted servant, I shall be to the end of my life ; 
 a flatterer you do not wish for." 
 
 The invective both of Burke and of Demosthenes 
 X. is furious and unmeasured. But Demosthenes has 
 I this that is peculiar to him : his deliberative eloquence 
 ' is free from personal attacks. Intent on great poli- 
 tical issues, he never once even names an opponent 
 before the Assembly — at least, in any speech un- 
 doubtedly genuine.^ In the law]-courts, and more 
 especially in criminal cases, there was a tradition of 
 invective (p. 130). At times, however, an intensity 
 of hatred finds the stereotyped phrases of abuse in- 
 adequate, and vents itself in those passages which so 
 greatly disfigure the speeches of Demosthenes and 
 Aeschines On the Embassy, and the speech on The 
 Croiun. But while the speech of Aeschines On the 
 Embassy never rises above a mean and personal dis- 
 cussion, that of Demosthenes deals also with great 
 questions, such as the responsibility of a statesman. 
 The contrast is still greater between the speech Against 
 Ctesiphon and the speech On the Crown. What is 
 
 1 This is one among many arguments against the genuineness 
 of the Fourth Philippic in its present form. 
 
156 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. viii. 
 
 true in this respect of Demosthenes is, though less 
 perfectly, true also of Burke. Neither of them lingers 
 long in the region of the personal. The air is soon 
 cleared, and we are again upon the heights. 
 , An apparent want of plan is the most salient 
 ' characteristic of structure in almost all the speeches 
 of Demosthenes, if we except the private orations. 
 Modem oratory seems to demand a business-like 
 perspicuity of arrangement Such, too, was the 
 practice of Aeschines. But Demosthenes is studi- 
 ously irregular. He transgresses all the ancient rules 
 of technical rhetoric He seldom makes any formal 
 partition into heads. Narrative, refutation, and proof, 
 are blended or displaced according to the requirements 
 of the case. The exordium alone stands clear and 
 sharp ; the epilogue is not always strictly defined 
 Yet there is nothing accidental in the disposition. 
 Certain architectonic ideas of order preside over the 
 whole. There is in each case a given effect to pro- 
 duce, and all is subordinated to this object There is 
 therefore no uniform type of structure. The grander 
 the scale of the design, the less rigorous the laws 
 of outward symmetry. Thus the longest speeches of 
 Demosthenes, those On the Embassy and On the Crozcn, 
 are the most intricate in arrangement (pp. 96 tf., 116 
 ff.) Genuine works of art, they cannot be dissected 
 or analysed by the listener, who has to yield for the 
 time to the generous deception ; at the end an im- 
 pression of organic unity remains. From his master, 
 IsKus, Demosthenes learnt these structural effects. 
 But what tends to become artificiality in Isreus is art 
 in Demosthenes. Isa^us often betrays his purpose. 
 Demosthenes seems natural, simple, and unperplexed. 
 He starts a thought and sets it aside to return to it 
 later and expand it He announces a scheme which 
 he does not follow {e.g. Embassy, § 4). He antici- 
 pates, digresses, recapitulates, and appears to be im- 
 
CHAP. VIII.] STATESMAN AND ORATOR. 157 
 
 pelled by a spirit of improvisation. Yet in every 
 speech there is some persistent central thought ; all 
 the details are grouped and massed round it ; with 
 each movement it rises into fresh prominence. It 
 was a remark of Pitt's that in addressing a popular 
 assembly you must either be copious on the points 
 you wish to emphasise or repeat them, and that he 
 preferred copiousness to repetition. Demosthenes 
 
 X. preferred repetition to copiousness ; but in this sense, 
 that he frequently came back upon the dominant 
 idea, and enforced it, not with verbal repetition, but 
 with fresh illustration. This is a capital feature in 
 his eloquence. He is resolved to secure one of the 
 high places of the field. From different quarters his 
 forces converge upon this point ; each avenue of 
 escape is blocked beforehand. Feints and diver- 
 sions are resorted to merely to conceal the premedi- 
 tated plan. No petty skirmishes prevent him from 
 striking at the heart of the enemy's strength. 
 
 Aristotle with admirable truth laid it down that logi- 
 cal proof is the first essential of rhetorical persuasion. 
 There is an idea now prevalent, derived rather from 
 the study of Roman than of Greek literature, that 
 ancient oratory appeals chiefly to feeling, and modern 
 oratory to reason. But in fact all the greatest orators, 
 ancient as well as modern, have been great reasoners. 
 It may be more plausibly maintained that there are 
 
 "X in Demosthenes few of those long chains of argument 
 for which Fox, for instance, was remarkable. But 
 even this statement is subject to some deduction. 
 There are many of the forensic speeches to which it 
 does not apply ; an interpretation of a complex law, 
 such as is found in The Aristocrates, is a sustained 
 argumentative process. His deliberative eloquence 
 is more popular and more varied in its method : 
 proof is less formally developed ; but a continuous 
 thread of thought is maintained, and whatever tends 
 
158 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. viu. 
 
 to provoke reflection, to quicken the reasoning faculty, 
 is welcomed and pressed into the sendee. To stifle 
 a free intelligence, and to win by mo\ing appeals, is a 
 short-lived triumph which Demosthenes rejects. He 
 would set his audience thinking. All he asks of 
 / them is to reason with him — Xoyi^ecrde 8i] tt/jo? 
 
 Vv 6(U)v. Among his most constraining instruments 
 of persuasion are lystorical examples, and chiefly 
 those which are drawn from recent and familiar 
 events. Each fact, each name, sets some emotion 
 vibrating. There is stroke upon stroke with little 
 breathing space between — " creber utraque manu 
 pulsat " — and each blow is forging a hnk in the 
 chain. The method is not demonstrative, but it is 
 essentially argumentative. The inference, if not ex- 
 plicitly drawn, is immediately suggested. 
 
 Another logical weapon which Demosthenes loves 
 
 y^ to wield is the dilemma ; and rarely has it been possible 
 to use it with such telling effect as is done in the 
 speech On the Embassy (§§ 102 fi"., see p. 97). His 
 natural strength and dexterity in argument are shown 
 in many forms ; above all in a certain combative 
 quality of his genius which he developed into 
 a commanding faculty of attack. Like Pitt he was 
 not content with defending himself, he presently 
 turned the tables and assumed the aggressive. The 
 speech On the Crown is a memorable case in point ; 
 minor instances occur in 2he Embassy (e.g. §§ 134- 
 146, ?§ 89, 90) where objections are met by unex- 
 pected retorts. 
 
 But the form of reasoning most distinctive of him 
 is when he closes with his adversary' and grips him 
 in strict and cogent argument. Then comes out the 
 pliant strength of the athlete, and his daring swiftness 
 of movement. Among the marks of such passages 
 arc a dramatic animation of manner, a quick inter- 
 change of question and answer, a pressing vehemence, . 
 
 X 
 
CHAP. VIII.] STATESMAN AND ORATOR. 159 
 
 sudden surprises and novel turns of thought or 
 phrase, an . incisive irony. Alternative possibilities 
 are stated and disposed of, or a principle is tested in 
 its detailed application. The method is peculiarly 
 effective in recapitulation, in securing, inch by inch, 
 ground which has been disputed and partially won. 
 This was the second great lesson he learnt from 
 Isffius ; and from the forensic sphere he imported it 
 into the deliberative. This " agonistic " virtue is 
 perhaps the severest test of popular eloquence. Cicero 
 has little of it ; Burke is totally without it ; Fox had 
 it; Gladstone has it, though in a less conspicuous 
 degree than other quaUties ; but Demosthenes here 
 stands supreme. 
 
 It is not possible with Demosthenes, as it is with 
 lesser orators, to map out a speech into parts and say : 
 here is an appeal to feeling ; here is pure reasoning ; 
 for thought is everywhere interpenetrated with feeling, 
 reason is itself passionate. That which fuses all into 
 unity is the force of an intense personality, which 
 cannot convince the intellect without kindHng the emo- 
 tions. The breath of passion may give life for the 
 time to the orator's word, but alone it cannot give 
 permanence. A great speaker of our day would, 
 with the addition of one quality, take rank among 
 the highest. John Bright has almost every Demos- 
 thenic gift except that of strong and persistent reason- 
 ing. He is easily led away into an emotional digression; 
 some of his noblest passages are loosely connected 
 with the subject, they are not wrought into the texture 
 of the thought. The two most perfect types in which 
 the eloquence of impassioned reason has hitherto 
 expressed itself are found in Demosthenes and Burke. 
 
 When warmth circulates through the whole speech 
 it is the less necessary to concentrate it on the perora- 
 tion. Demosthenes in this respect obeyed an Attic 
 rule. The Athenians, distrusting their own sensibility. 
 
i6o DEMOSTHENES. [chap. viii. 
 
 resented emotional pressure, and the orator, especially 
 towards the close of his speech, avoided all semblance 
 of doing moral violence to his audience, and addressed 
 himself mainly to their reason. In early Attic orator)' 
 the law of a final calm was scarcely ever violated. By 
 degrees more colour and animation made their way 
 , into the epilogue; but pathetic outbursts in the Roman 
 ^/>^manner were still excluded, and the last sentences 
 were studiously unimpassioned. 
 
 The close of an Attic speech recalls the close of an 
 Attic tragedy in its sedate harmony, and in the place 
 it gives to artistic convention and euphemistic phrase. 
 Most of Demosthenes' deliberative speeches end in a 
 solemn wish or prayer, and the last word of all is 
 frequently one of lucky import Take, for instance, 
 the end of the Third Philippic (p. i lo) : " This is what 
 I have to say, these are the measures I propose. 
 Adopt these measures, and it is my beUef that even 
 yet our affairs may be retrieved. If any man has better 
 advice to offer, let him speak forth and declare his 
 counsel. And, be your decision what it may, grant, 
 f all ye gods, that it may be for our good " (o n 8' vfj-iv So^ti 
 I tout', di 7ravT€s dtou, ori'trcyKoi) ; Or again, the last 
 / sentence of the Pi/ si Philippic : " May that prevail 
 / which is for the common good of all " (j-ik-wtj S' o ti Totrwr 
 I v/iii' fxeXXet a-x'voicreiv) ; or of the Pirsl Olyttihiac. 
 \ " On all accounts may it turn out well " (xpija-ra 8' ttif 
 'TraiTos ei'veKa). Four of his court speeches end thus: 
 ' " I ."^ee no reason to add anything ; you fully appre- 
 hend, I think, what has been said " — a formula also 
 found twice in Isosus. The peroration of Thf CroTvn 
 has been already noted as a signal exception (p. 123); 
 there a passionate imprecation precedes the blessing. 
 'I'he generation that succeeded Demosthenes admitted 
 pathetic perorations with less reserve. Lycurgus his 
 younger contemporary, ends a speech in the following 
 words, where the pathos and the personification arc some- 
 
CHAP. VIII.] STATESMAN AND ORATOR. i6i 
 
 what modern in character : " Deem then, Athenians, 
 that a prayer goes up to you from the very land and 
 all its groves, from the harbours, from the arsenals, 
 from tlie walls of the city ; deem that the shrines and 
 holy places are summoning you to protect them ; and, 
 remembering the charges against him, make Leocrates 
 a proof that compassion and tears do not prevail with 
 you over solicitude for the laws and for the common- 
 weal." ^ 
 
 "One might," says the author of the treatise On 
 the Sublime^ " as soon face with steady eyes a descend- 
 ing thunderbolt, as oppose a calm front to the storm 
 of passions which Demosthenes can arouse." Some 
 feelings, however, he seldom wakens. His highly- 
 wrought sensibility, due partly to the wrongs of child- 
 hood, was very different from a natural and healthy 
 pathos, in which, as in humour, he is deficient — 
 again in this respect resembling Burke. In this field 
 of the emotions he wisely puts himself under severe 
 self-control. While the pathos of Cicero is tender 
 and effusive, and adapted to stir a jury, the pathos of 
 Demosthenes is austere and Thucydidean in its reserve, 
 and unquestionably better suited to political discussion. 
 The desolation of Phocis, as told of in The Embassy 
 (§§ 65, 66), is no moving picture of ruin, but an out- 
 line of fact, where pity for suffering is merged in a 
 fiery scorn and indignation against its authors. The 
 instance is a typical one. It is hardly necessary to 
 contrast with this the melodramatic pathos of Aeschines. 
 
 Quintilian claims a superiority for his countrymen 
 over the Greeks in wit as well as in pathos. So far 
 as the wit of Demosthenes is concerned, the claim may 
 readily be conceded. Here he bears no comparison 
 with Cicero. His pleasantries were ponderous and 
 sometimes coarse. The writer above quoted says 
 
 1 Lycurg. Lcocr., translated by Prof. Jebb, Attic Orators, ii. 
 3S0. 
 
 M 
 
i62 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. viii. 
 
 that " where Demosthenes strives to be jocose or 
 witty he makes us laugh at him rather than with him ;" 
 and we find in one of the letters ascribed to Aeschines 
 that " no one ever laughed at Demosthenes' jokes 
 except Ctesiphon " (Aesch. Ep. v.) It is only in a 
 few court speeches, where he is writing in the character 
 of his client, that he has any of the charm peculiar to 
 Lysias. The naive and innocent humour of the 
 speeches Against Collides and Against Cotton has 
 already been referred to (i>p. 133-135). In his political 
 orations he is bitterly in earnest ; the people preferred 
 smart sayings to hard duty, and he will not indulge 
 them. His eloquence, like his character, has in it a 
 biting and pungent flavour. Humour on his lips is 
 frozen into sarcasm ; scorn takes the place of railler}', 
 irony of wit. Touches, however, of grim humour, 
 reminding us of Aristotle, do occur, chiefly in illustra- 
 tions ; as in T/ie Crown, where Aeschines, giving his 
 counsel after the event, is compared to the jihysician 
 who prescribes for his patient after the funeral. The 
 speech On the Chersonese has a subdued sarcasm and 
 subtle irony running through the first half {e.g. §§ 5, 
 10, 27, 36); more often the irony is disdainful and 
 indignant, as in a f;imous passage of the Third Philippic 
 (§§ 65, 66). 
 
 The style of Demosthenes is now accepted as the 
 tj'pe of all that is simjile, direct, and forcible. Yet to 
 read him with ease is one of the latest fruits of Greek 
 scholarship. His vigorous compression of thought, 
 and inversions of the natural order of words for the 
 sake of emphasis and of rhythm, require continuous 
 attention on the part of the reader. An intimate study 
 of Thucydides has left its visible stamp on the early 
 deliberative speeches. It is doubtless with special 
 reference to these speeches that Dionysius, the best of 
 the ancient critics, ob«erves that, " in the style of 
 Thucydides and Demosthenes, there is much that is 
 
CHAP. VIII.] STATESMAN AND ORATOR. 163 
 
 y^ obscure and needs a commentary" (Ljs. ch. 4). De- 
 mosthenes, at the opening of his career, seems to have 
 regarded a stately and archaic dignity as appropriate 
 to political debate. Plutarch says that the people 
 could not bear his first attempts as being over-elabo- 
 rate ; and, indeed, parts of the speech Ou the Sym- 
 ■inories'^ (354 B.C.) might have been written by Thucy- 
 dides himself. There is the same pregnancy and 
 involution of thought, and a similar love of strained 
 antithesis. The early forensic speeches have traces of 
 over-elaboration of a somewhat different kind — an 
 exact balancing of clauses, a jingling of final syllables, 
 an almost pedantic avoidance of a hiatus between 
 vowels, and some exaggerated ornament. The great 
 organ of speech, afterwards perfected by the orator, 
 was not yet flexible to his use. 
 1/ From about 352 B.C. onwards, his eloquence, in all 
 
 'its branches, becomes more varied, more abundant, 
 and gives out fuller tones. The deliberative speeches 
 gain warmth and colour. The conversational vivacity 
 now introduced into them is one of many points of 
 contact which they have with modern parliamentary 
 oratory. Henceforth Demosthenes moves in ampler 
 periods ; these he blends with compact sentences. 
 While drawing largely on the popular idiom, he adapts 
 it to artistic expression. Words and phrases of everj'- 
 day life, which hardly find a place in other orators, 
 are moulded into new combinations so as to seem 
 natural without being commonplace. His similes, spar- 
 ingly used, and seldom developed in detail, derive much 
 of their force from their apposite homeliness (pp. 59, 
 60, 68, 74, 109). The metaphors are more daring; 
 but here too there is little expansion, the image being, 
 
 ^ The different manner adopted by the orator at this period in 
 the Assembly and the law-courts is well shown by a comparison 
 of this speech with the Leptines, which belongs to the same 
 year, but is easy, fluent, and lively. 
 
i64 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. viii. 
 
 for the most part, gathered up into a single word or 
 phrase which is struck off in the heat of passion. Yet, 
 though the dominant impression left on us by Demos- 
 thenes is that of severe and disciplined strength, he 
 appeared to a Greek taste to be at times so elaborately 
 ornate that Aeschines criticised him on this score, and 
 Dionysius admits the fact while he offers a justifica- 
 tion. It is in allusion to this manifold and versatile 
 faculty of Demosthenes that Dionysius calls him a very 
 Proteus {Dem. ch. 8). Elements which are elsewhere 
 found scattered are fused and wTought into one by his 
 genius. 
 
 The union of consummate artistic skill with a direct- 
 ness of aim that is seemingly unconscious of literary 
 effort, is a capital feature in his eloquence. Ornament 
 
 V for its own sake he disdained ; no orator has so few 
 showy passages, or is less adapted for a book of e.\- 
 tracts. To use his own phrase {Chers. § 73), to speak 
 was, in a sense, to act. His genius, severely prac- 
 tical, rejects all that is not strictly pertinent to the 
 subject in hand. Finish of workmanship is not lost, 
 however, on any popular assembly, and the audience 
 in his case was a nation of artists, who enjoyed a poli- 
 tical debate as they did a dramatic or a fnusical 
 festival. He was resolved to make his eloquence 
 something more than a spectacle ; but to do so he 
 must first satisfy every artistic requirement. Those 
 very speeches which are alive with the fire of passion 
 
 ^have been laboriously prepared in the closet. The 
 evidence of the speeches themselves here falls in with 
 tradition. Demosthenes avows and justifies his own 
 scrupulous premeditation in a special case {Midias, 
 § 191). Sometimes he repeats himself almost ver- 
 bally in difTerent speeches ; for a Greek, with an artist's 
 love for ])crfect form, when he had once expressed 
 his thought in the best way possible, saw no reason 
 for afterwards expressing it in the second best way. 
 
CHAP, viii.] STATESMAN AND ORATOR. 165 
 
 His general avoidance of a hiatus between vowels — a 
 practice derived from Isocrates — is highly significant. 
 Modern criticism has discovered the limitations of this 
 rule, and distinguished the larger freedom of the 
 later speeches from the strict usage of the earlier 
 period. The most important result of the inquiry is 
 this : that the chief anomalies in respect of the hiatus 
 occur in precisely those passages or speeches which, 
 on other grounds, we believe to have been imperfectly 
 revised. We naturally infer that it was only by slow 
 processes of correction that the hiatus was subjected 
 to the laws which now govern it. The rhythm is such 
 as to warrant the same general inference. Its com- 
 plex and subtle harmonies, resembling those of a Pin- 
 daric ode, are pronounced by Dionysius {de Compos. 
 pp. 189-206) to be due to no instinctive process. More 
 recent investigations fully bear out this view. The 
 rhythm of Demosthenes, though modelled on that of 
 Isocrates, is even more unique in ancient oratory than 
 that of Burke is among the moderns. 
 
 The exact relation between the written and spoken 
 speeches of Demosthenes can never be definitely 
 settled. We know that he seldom extemporised, and 
 that when he did so he was liable to be carried away 
 by transports akin to madness.^ His careful and 
 anxious preparation was probably in part a safeguard 
 against his own impetuosity. We know, too, that in 
 the speech On the Embassy there must have been a 
 general, though not a detailed, correspondence be- 
 tween the spoken and the written form. So much 
 may be inferred from the reply of Aeschines. But 
 these considerations do not carry us far. The main 
 difficulty in the way of believing that we have the 
 
 ^ The vulgarisms of phrase imputed to him by Aeschines, and 
 nowhere found in the extant speeches, were as unknown to 
 Dionysius as to us, but may perhaps have escaped from him in 
 some of these sudden outbursts. 
 
i66 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. viii. 
 
 idcliberative speeches in the form in which they were 
 ^(delivered, lies in their remarkable brevity and com- 
 pression. We must be careful not to exaggerate this 
 difficulty under the influence of modern notions. It 
 is only in recent times that we have come to think 
 that a great speech must necessarily be a long one ; 
 till the close of the last century, when Burke set a 
 new example, speeches of two or three hours' length 
 seem to have been almost unknown in our own Par- 
 liament And at Athens there were special causes 
 which helped to keep debate within moderate limits. 
 To Athenian perception it was plainer than it is to ours, 
 that the highest strength lies in clearness combined with 
 terseness, and that the first requisite of speech is that 
 it should be apt. The questions debated, moreover, 
 were more familiar and invoked less complex issues ; 
 the Assembly was generally held in the open air, and 
 the audience on great occasions might number, per- 
 haps, 6000 or 7000 people. The last fact alone 
 would tend to shorten the deliberative as compared 
 with the forensic speeches. The longest deliberative 
 speech of Demosthenes could not in its present form 
 have taken much more than an hour to deliver. 
 Yet, making every allowance on this head, we shall 
 be inclined, I think, to hold that occasional ampli- 
 Hcation must have been necessary in order that the 
 political speeches, whose full force we begin to feel 
 only on repeated reading, should tell with full effect 
 , even on an Athenian audience. 
 ^ In our final judgment on Demosthenes we cannot 
 ilI) separate the orator from the statesman. If we regard 
 , his whole policy as a grand mistake, our estimate of 
 "^ his elocjuence must be affected by this view. It has 
 been sometimes said that he did not appreciate the 
 forces opposed to him, that he showed a want of 
 political penetration. The weaknesses, however, 
 which he exposed in the Macedonian power, were 
 
CHAP, viii.] STATESMAN AND ORATOR. 1G7 
 
 not imaginar}'. That power, he said, had been 
 reared on frauds and broken promises ; there was a 
 corrupt court, a discontented people, suspicious alHes 
 {Olynth. ii.); behind the prince there was no per- 
 manent state organisation {Phil. iii. § 72). He 
 expected that the Macedonian, Hke other mihtary 
 monarchies, would crumble away at the death of the 
 despot. A phenomenon unique in history defeated 
 these calculations. Philip was succeeded by a son 
 greater than himself. 
 
 But never at any moment in the contest with 
 Philip did Demosthenes shut his eyes to the danger, 
 or lull his countrymen into a false security. To con- 
 vince and to enlighten was his constant aim. He 
 saw the conditions of ultimate victory with a terrible 
 prescience. He knew the utmost that Attic oratory 
 could do when pitted against an absolute monarch, 
 v.-ielding all the resources of war and of diplomacy. 
 A reflective reason controls his most impassioned 
 speeches, and his measures are marked by a business- 
 like precision. Gifted with a sense of the opportune, 
 which is an element of genius, though it is often 
 misconstrued into inconsistency, he could stand 
 forth to counsel peace when the interests of the state 
 required it. By virtue of a commanding eloquence 
 he carried on the struggle for thirteen years almost 
 single-handed. There were moments up to the last 
 when the turn of the scale was doubtful. A few 
 years before Chseronea the national life awoke from 
 its long slumber before his potent breath ; had the 
 awakening come a little earlier, the issue might have 
 been, if not reversed, postponed for another generation. 
 
 Isocrates invited Philip to extend to Athens the 
 beneficent interference he had shown in Thessaly. 
 There have been those, both in ancient and in modern 
 times, who have censured Demosthenes for ranging 
 himself on an opposite side. Polybius (xvii. 14) 
 
l68 DEMOSTHENES. [chap. viii. 
 
 maintains that those whom he branded as traitors in 
 Arcadia, Messene, Argos, Thessaly, Bceotia, were in 
 truth benefactors to their respective cities ; that the 
 Peloponnesian states in particular enjoyed under 
 Macedon a freedom before unknown ; and that 
 Athens, as shown by the event, was unwise in re- 
 sisting. Polybius, writing under the shadow of 
 Roman greatness, views the struggle of free Greece 
 against Macedon as he would the rebellion of subject 
 Achaea against Rome ; and he is not in a position to 
 value aright political independence. But even if he 
 is taken on his own narrow ground, his statement may 
 be disputed. Demosthenes denies it by anticipation, 
 and history confirms him when he says that the dis- 
 loyal states of Greece came off worse than Athens at 
 the hands of the conqueror {Cro'dni, § 65). 
 
 Modern objections have generally been couched in 
 a somewhat different form. The victory of Demos- 
 thenes, it is said, would have retarded the progress of 
 the world. Demosthenes, says Cousin, "represented 
 the past of Greece; he failed disgracefully." "Our 
 symi)athics should be on the victorious side, for it is 
 always that of the better cause, that of civilisation 
 and humanity." But surely there is a limit to the 
 foresight we may demand from statesmen. Demos- 
 thenes was, doubtless, mistaken in speaking of Philip 
 himself as "a barbarian," as "the enemy of Athens 
 and of the very ground on which she stood." Philip 
 had genuine Greek sympathies, of which Demosthenes 
 was not aware. Yet, as we have seen, there was a 
 very rcAl sense in which Philip, as head of his nation, 
 was the rej^rcsentative barbarian (p. 51). It was only by 
 effacing what was Macedonian and absorbing what was 
 Greek, that the triumph of Philip became the triumph 
 of civilisation. Demosthenes could not have fore- 
 seen the Ares of Macedon being transformed, as on 
 his coins, into the Athenian Apollo, or forecast the 
 
CHAP. VIII.] STATESMAN AND ORATOR. 169 
 
 intellectual empire which out of defeat was to be 
 built up for Greece. Nor even, had he obtained a 
 vision of all this, is it so clear that he ought to have 
 counselled his countrymen otherwise than he did. 
 It may well be doubted whether the bequest of a 
 weakened sense of national dignity and independence 
 would not have been a loss to the world greater than 
 the gain of hastening forward events by a few years. 
 In any case it is perilous work w^hen a statesman sits 
 in the seat of the prophet, and substitutes his own 
 surmises on the tendency of things for the " salutary 
 prejudice called our country." 
 
 The swift decline and death of the Hellenic spirit 
 within Greece proper, following upon the Macedonian 
 supremacy, may be gathered from the hymn in which, 
 fifteen years after the death of Demosthenes, Athens 
 welcomed Demetrius within her walls. A few lines 
 of it may here be quoted : — " Hail, son of mightiest 
 Neptune, and of Aphrodite, for the other gods are far 
 hence ; they hear not, or they are not, or they heed 
 us not. But as for thee, we see thee in presence, 
 not in wood or in stone, but in very truth; our 
 prayers are unto thee." 
 
 "Such," says Athenseus (vi. 63, 64), " was the song 
 of the warriors of Marathon not only in public but in 
 their oato homes, those who had punished with death 
 prostration before the King of Persia, and had slain 
 the myriad hosts of the barbarians." We may still 
 feel grateful to one who, though it was in a losing 
 cause, strove to arrest so sad a decadence. „ 
 
 V O 
 
 M 2 
 
TABLE OF THE WORKS OF 
 DEMOSTHENES. 
 
 The following is a list of the writings handed down among tl.e 
 works of Demosthenes. On questions concerning genuineness 
 there is little approach to unanimity of view (see p. 139) ; but the 
 tendency of recent critics (e.,c- of Blass as compared with A- 
 Schaefer) is to be more conser\-ative. The results here given 
 are those to which critical opinion now seems on the whole to 
 incline. The writings marked with f were doubted in antiquity, 
 those marked with * not till modern times. 
 
 I. DELIBERATIVE SPEECHES {(jvix^ov\€vtikoI \6yoi). 
 
 Cc'/nii/w 
 
 On the S>'Tnmorics (xiv.) 
 
 ly(.« 
 
 ll/U. 
 
 354 nc. 
 
 
 For the Megalopolitans {xvi. 
 
 ) 
 
 
 353 B.C. 
 
 
 First Philippic (iv.) 
 
 
 
 351 B.c. 
 
 
 For the Rnodians(Tv.) . 
 
 
 
 351 B.C. (but see p. 
 
 43) 
 
 First Olynthiac (i.) 
 
 
 
 349 B-c. 
 
 
 Second Olynthiac (ii.) . 
 
 
 
 349 B.c. 
 
 
 ThirJ Olynthiac (iii.) . 
 
 
 
 349 B c. 
 
 
 On the Pe.ice (y.) . 
 
 
 
 346 B.C. 
 
 
 Second Philippic (vi.) 
 
 
 
 344 BC- 
 
 
 On the Chersonese (viii.) 
 
 
 
 341 B.C. 
 
 
 Third Philippic (ix.) 
 
 
 
 341 B.C. 
 
 
 (Philip's Letter (xiL) is probably genuine.) 
 
 Spurious. 
 
 <On Halonne'ius (vii.) [by Hcgisippus] . 
 tOu The Treaty with Alexander (xvii.) 
 
 343 B.C. 
 335 B-C 
 
 Rhetorical Forzeries, 
 
 ♦ Fourth Philitjpic (x.) 
 *.An<wcr to Philip's let 
 
 ips letter (xi.) 
 *On Financial Organisation (n-cpi (rvt^a{<uf, xiii.) 
 
LIST OF WRITINGS. 
 
 171 
 
 II. FORENSIC SPEECHES {oiKafiKol \6yoL). 
 A. — In Public Causes {drj/xdcnoL). 
 
 Against Androtion (xxii.) 
 Against Leptines (xx.) . 
 Against Tiniocrates (xxiv.) . 
 Against Aristocrates (xxiii.) . 
 Against Midias (xxi.) . 
 On the Embassy (xix.) . 
 On the Crown (xviii.) . 
 
 • 355 B.C. 
 . 354 B.C. 
 
 • 353 B.C. 
 . 352 B.C. 
 . 347 B.C. 
 . 344 B.C. 
 . 330 B.C. 
 
 spurious, 
 
 f Against Nesera (\\x.) between 343 and 339 B.C. 
 
 tAgainst Theocrines(lviii.) . . . . about 340 B.C. 
 
 Rhetorical Forgeries. 
 tAgainst Aristogeiton, I. IT. (xxv. xxvi.) 
 
 B. — In Private Causes {I'StwrtKoO- 
 Gcmiitie. 
 
 Against Aphobus, I. II. (xxvii. xxviii.) 
 *Against Aphobus for Phanos (xxix.) 
 
 Against Onetor, I. II. (xxx. xxxi.) 
 *On the Trierarchic Crown (li.) 
 
 Against Spudias (xli.) . 
 *Against Callicles (Iv.) . 
 
 Against Conon (hv.) 
 
 For Phormio (xxxvi.) . 
 *Against Stephanus, I. (xlv.). 
 tAgainst Boeotus, I. (xxxix.) . 
 
 Against Pantaenetus (xxxvii.) 
 
 Against Nausimachus (xxxviii.) 
 *Against Eubulides(lvii.) 
 
 363 B.C. 
 363 B.C. 
 362 B.C. 
 
 between 361 and 357 B.C. 
 ? 
 
 350 B.C. 
 349 or 348 B.C. 
 348 B.C. 
 346 B.C. 
 
 probably about 346 B.C. 
 345 B.C. 
 
 Spurious. 
 
 (The first five of the following speeches, as also the speech Against Neaera, 
 are for ApoUodorus ; but whether by a common author or not is very un 
 certain.) 
 
 *Against Callippus (li.) probably 369 B.C. 
 
 tAgainst Nicostratus (liii.) .... between 368 and 363 B.C. 
 
 tAgainst Timotheus (xlix.) .... 362 B.C. 
 
 *Against Polycles (1.) ..... about 358 B.C. 
 
 *Against Stephanus, II. (.\lvi.) . . . 348 B.C. 
 
 tAgainst Euergus and Mnesibulus (xlvii.) . between 356 and 353 B.C. 
 
 *Against Zenothemis (xxxii.) . . . . ? 
 
 tAgainst Boeotus, II. (xl.) .... between 348 and 346 B.C. 
 
 *Against Macartatus (xliii.) .... about 341 B.C. 
 
172 DEMOSTHENES. 
 
 •Against Olympiodonis (xlviii.) 
 f Against Lacritus(xxxv.) 
 tAgainst Phacnippus (xlii.) 
 •■Against Leochares (xliv.) 
 *Against Apaturius (xxxiii.) . 
 'Against Phormio (xxxiv.) 
 tAgainst Dionysodorus Qvi.) . 
 
 about 341 B.C. 
 
 J 
 prob. not before 330 B.C. 
 
 T 
 not before 341 B.C. 
 about 326 B.C. 
 323 or 322 B.C. 
 
 III. EPIDEICTIC SPEECHES {iTriStiKTiKoi \6ydi). 
 
 Spurious. 
 
 •tEpitaphius. 
 tEroticus. 
 
 •PROEMS or INTRODUCTIONS (probably genuine 
 
 and before 350 ii.c.) 
 
 *LETTERS (very doubtful). 
 
 The MSS. of Demosthenes may be divided into three main families, 
 represented respectively — 
 
 (i.) By the Parisian S or 2 of the tenth centurj-, which is far superior to 
 all the rest. It not only has fewer mistakes and interpolations, and 
 agrees best with ancient quotations, but it h.as many minor marks 
 of accuracy ; the order of the words in particular preserves a dis- 
 tinctively Demosthenic rhythm and character. Its value was first 
 seen by Bekker, whose Oratorts Attici (1822-3) placed the '^''' ^^ 
 Demosthenes on a new and secure basis. Baiter and Sauppe, the 
 Zurich editors, have followed S still more scrupulously : sometimes, 
 perh.ips, with an e.\cessive reverence ; for S, like other excellent 
 MSS., contains some absurd errors. Of the same family is the 
 Laurentian L of the thirteenth century. 
 
 (2.) By Marcianiis F (aX St. Mark's, Venice) of the eleventh century, the 
 MS. which is the basis of the Aldine edition of 1504 ; and by Bava' 
 ricus B (at Munich), a copy of F, and probably of the thirteenth 
 centurj'. 
 
 (3.) By Auirnstanus I or K^, formerly at Augsburg, now at ^Munich, 
 probably of the eleventh century, and the basis of Rciske's edition 
 of Demosthenes in the Oratorcs Attici (\^^<3■l^^^ 
 
 Printed (Y R. & R. Clark, EiitHbHr^h. 
 
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