He was a man of immense
industry
and ability, and
was naturally endowed with all the qualities which go
to make an orator.
was naturally endowed with all the qualities which go
to make an orator.
Demosthenese - 1869 - Brodribb
31924026456347 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www.
hathitrust.
org/access_use#pd-google
? CHAPTER VIII.
DEMOSTHENEB AND MEIDIAS.
AN incident about this time in the life of Demosthenes,
which gave occasion 'to one of his well-known speeches,
illustrates rather strikingly some of the less agreeable
phases of Athenian society. There was, of course, refine-
ment and polish of a high degree, and, on the whole,
the tone and temper of the citizens seem to have been
humane and generous. But still, even at Athens, the
scandals and breaches of good taste and manners, which
one would fear are all but inseparable from democracy,
now and then made their appearance. Political rancour
and party violence reached an outrageous length, and
under their shelter the grossest acts of wrong were from
time to time committed with impunity. A rich man,
if he chose, might have plenty of influence in the State;
and along with this he would have at his command
many opportunities of injuring and oppressing those
whom he personally disliked. It appears that there
'were several such men at Athens--men who no doubt
aspired to imitate the grand airs and fashionable ex-
travagance of Alcibiades, who, clever and accomplished
as he was, at last made himself intolerable to the citi-
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? DEMOSIHENES AND HEIDIAS. 85
zens of a free state. Many of these had nothing but
riches to recommend them, and were pestilent fellows
whose idea of life was really nothing better than coarse,
vulgar rowdyism.
It was the fate of Demosthenes to come into collision
with a man of this class. Early in life, at the time
when he was engaged in his suit with his guardians,
he provoked the enmity of Meidias, a rich, well-born
man, and one of the constant supporters of the peace
party of Eubulus. The quarrel between them originated
in the following singular way. ' The brother of Meidias,
Thrasylochus, offered, according to a practice allowed
at Athens in the case of a trierarchy, or the provid-
ing a war-ship for the State, to exchange properties
with Demosthenes, and, in the event of the offer being
accepted, he gave the guardians privately to understand
that the lawsuit should be dropped. In this_manner'
he sought to defeat the legal proceedings which Demos-'
thenes was taking, and, in fact, to get his just claims"
set aside. The two brothers, it appears, on one occasion'
actually rushed into his house, behaved with excessive'
violence, and used coarse and ribald language in the'''
presence of his sister, then a mere girl. For this outrage'
Demosthenes sued Meidias, and recovered damages; but '
he had not beenable to obtain payment. From that1
time the man became his bitter enemy, and worried and'
persecuted him in every possible way. His animosity'
' was all the more virulent as he was also politically'
opposed to Demosthenes. In the year 351 13. 0. both'
served in a military expedition to Euboea--Meidias in'
the cavalry, Demosthenes as a foot soldier. Neither'
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? 86 DEMOSTHENES.
of them was for any length of time with the'army.
Demosthenes went back to Athens, on the pretext that
he had to undertake the important public duty of chor-
agus or choir-director for his tribe. It seems that he
undertook this quite voluntarily, but-his enemy hinted
that he had merely done so to escape the hardships of
campaigning. And he followed up the taunt with
gross insult and outrage. The choir-director, as we
have seen, usually appeared, when the ceremony was
celebrated, in a special dress, and wore a crown; and
Demosthenes had ordered for the occasion a particularly
magnificent robe and a crown of gold. Meidias con-
trived to break into the embroiderer's shop where
the dress had been prepared, and spoilt the finery in
which Demosthenes was to show himself. He went
further; he struck him on the face before the assembled
audience, and, according to Demosthenes' own account,
was the means of losing him the prize, which his chorus
would have won. The spectators were indignant; and
Meidias was convicted of the crime of sacrilege, as it
would seem, on the very same day by an assembly held.
in the theatre. But the affair could not rest here. It
was for a court of justice to decide how he was to be
punished. Clearly, it was right that Demosthenes
should prosecute him, and this he did. He was thirty-
two years of age at the time. Meidias tried to defeat
the prosecution by indicting Demosthenes on the charge
of desertion of military service, on the ground that he
had left the army in Euboea and returned to Athens.
The indictment came to nothing; but Demosthenes, it
appears, was not decisively successful in his proceed-
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? DEMOSTHENES AND MEIDIAS. 87
ings against Meidias. He was reproached by his rival,
. ? Eschines, with having compromised the affair. At
all events, it is not certain whether the case was ever
brought to trial. But the tone of the extant speech
certainly implies this ; and it is really diflicult to sup-
pose, looking at some passages in which he takes credit
to himself for having rejected a compromise and having
brought the defendant to trial, that it was merely writ-
ten and never delivered. This is, we know, a very
general opinion, and there are reasons for it; but in the
face of the speech as it has come down to us, it seems
a question whether it can be sustained. ' '
The tone of the speech is savage and violent. It is
full of furious invective. But at least it is interesting
as giving us a glimpse into some of the abuses arising
out of wealth and insolence even in a democratical
community like Athens. We have an amusing picture
of Meidias himself; and though perhaps it is a cari-
cature, it was no doubt typical of a really existing
class. He had, it is said, got himself elected a cavalry
officer on the strength of being a rich man, and yet he
could not so much as ride through the marketplace.
His single act of munificence was giving the State a
war-ship, when he knew he was not likely to incur any
personal danger. He delighted in making a vulgar
parade of his wealth. He had built a house at Eleusis,
one of the suburbs of Athens, so big that it darkened
all the houses in the place. He used to take his wife
to the Mysteries, or to any place she had a fancy for
visiting, in a carriage and pair. He would push
through the marketplace and the leading thorough-
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? 88 _ DEMOSTHENES.
fares, talking of his dinners and his drinking-horns so
loud that all the passers-by could hear. " Do not," says
Demosthenes in his speech, "honour and admire things
of this kind--do not judge of liberality by these tests,
whether a man builds splendid houses or has many
female servants, or handsome furniture; but look who
is spirited and liberal in those things which the bulk
of you share the enjoyment of. Meidias, you will
find, has nothing of that kind about him. "
"\Vill you," he asks, "let Meidias escape because
he is rich' ! This is pretty much the cause of his
insolence. Therefore you should rather take away the
means which enable him to be insolent than pardon
him in consideration of them. To allow an audacious
blackguard like him to have wealth at his command
is to put arms in his hands against yourselves. " "
"I take it you all know his disposition, his offensive
and overbearing behaviour; and some of you, I daresay,
have been wondering about things which they know
themselves, but have not heard from me now. Many
of the injured parties do not even like to tell all that
they have suffered, dreading this man's litigiousness,
and the fortune which makes such a despicable fallow'
strong and terrible. For when a rogue and a_bully>is'
supported by wealth and power, it is a wall of defence
against any attack. Let Meidias be stripped of his
possessions, and most likely he will not play the bully.
If he should, he will be less regarded than the humblest
man among you; he will rail and bawl to no purpose
then, and be punished for any misbehaviour like the
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? DEMOSTHENES AND MEIDIAS. 89
rest of us. Now, it seems, Polyeuctus and Timocrates
and the ragamuflin Euctemon are his bodyguard ;
these are a sort of mercenaries that he keeps about
him, and others also besides them, a confederate band
of witnesses, who never trouble you openly, but by
simply nodding their heads afiirm and lie with perfect
case. By the powers, I do not believe they get any
good from him; but they are wonderful people for
making up to the rich, and attending on them, and
giving evidence. All this, I take it, is a danger to any
of you that live quietly by yourselves as well as you
can; and therefore it is that you assemble together, in
order that, though taken separately you are over-
matched by any one either in friends or riches, or in
anything else, you may collectively be more than a
match for him and put a stop to his insolence. "
Meidias, according to Demosthenes, was at heart a
coward, and would be sure to make an abject appeal
to the people's pity. The following passage is towards
the end of the speech :-- '
"I know he will have his children in court and
Whine; he will talk very humbly, shedding tears and
making himself as piteous as he can. Yet the more he
'humbles himself, the more ought you to detest him.
'Why! Because if the outrageousness and violence of
his conduct arose out of his inability to be humble, it
would have been fair to make some allowance for his
temper, and the accident which made him what he is,
'But if_ he knows how to behave himself properly when
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? 90 DEMOSTHENES.
he likes, and has adopted a different line of conduct by
choice, surely it is quite evident that if he eludes
justice now, he will again become the same Meidias
that you know him for. You must not listen to him,
then; you must not let the present occasion, when he
is playing the hypocrite, have more weight and influence
with you than the whole past of which you have had
experience.
"Perhaps he will say of me, This man is /arliiiratol'.
Well; if one who advises what he thinks for your
good, without being troublesome or intrusive, is an
orator, I would not deny or refuse the name. But if
an orator be what (to my knowledge and to your know-
ledge) certain of our speakers are--irnpudent fellows,
enriched at your expense--I can hardly be that; for
I have received nothing from you, but spent all my
substance upon you, except a mere trifle. Probably,
also,' Meidias will say that all my speech is prepared.
I admit that I have got it up as well'as I possibly
could. I were a complete simpleton indeed, if, having
suffered and still suffering such injuries, I took no pains
about the mode of stating them to you. I maintain
that has composed my speech; he who has
supplied the facts which the speech is about, may most
fairly be deemed its author, not he who has merely pre-
pared it or studied how to lay an honest case before
you. " \
The speech is not, we think, one of Demosthenes'
best; but it is often inger1_ious, and it certainly shows
singu_l_a_r power of invective. It suggests that what we
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? DEMOSTHENES AND MEIDIAS. _ 91 _
should call very loose practice on the part of an advo-
cate was tolerated in an Athenian court. Demosthenes
by no means confines himself to the outrage committed
on him by Meidias, but speaks of the injuries he had
inflicted on others, and indeed attacks generally the
man's whole life and character. The attack may have
been deserved; still, the manner of it, and the circum-
stances under which it was made, point to the exist-
ence of dangers at Athens to which any citizen might
suddenly find himself exposed. '
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? CHAPTER IX.
PHILIP MASTER OF THERMOPYLE AND OF PHOCIS--
PEACE BETWEEN HIM AND A'l'HENS--COUNSEL OF
DEMOSTHENES.
WE now enter on a period of melancholy disgrace and
humiliation for the Greek race. Within two years the
barbarian destroyer of Olynthus becomes master of the
key to Greece, the famous pass of Thermopylae, and of
the whole of Phocis, the country in which stood the
mountains of Parnassus, and the old and venerable
temple of Delphi. Events more terrific and momentous,
says Demosthenes in one of his speeches, had never
occurred either in his own time or in that of any of his
predecessors. Athens was forced into a miserably
ignominious peace, and many of her citizens had
stooped to the infamy of being the mere tools and
paid agents of the " man of Macedon. " Even Isocrates,
true Greek as he was in all his sympathies, as well as
thoroughly upright and high-minded, was now con-
vinced that the best wisdom for Greece was to put
itself under the leadership of this wonderfully success-
ful prince, and allow him to conduct its united armies
to the conquest of Persia.
t'
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? PEACE BETWEEN PHILIP AND ATHENS. 93
The history of these five years is somewhat intricate.
It will be enough for the present purpose to summarise
the general course of events. The period was mainly
occupied in negotiations on the part of Athens with
Philip. These were ill-managed, and had a most dis-
astrous conclusion. One motive which no doubt
prompted them was, the very natural desire of recover-
'ing those Atheniangcitizens who had been captured
with the Olyfithiansfl Toward Athens Philip had usu-
ally shown himself gracious and conciliatory. So, when
the relatives of two of the captives, both men of high
position, presented themselves as suppliants before the
_Assembly, it was decided to communicate with Philip.
'A favourable answer was received; and we have reason
to believe that now there was an inclination in favour
of peace. At first it was otherwise_ Even Eubulus and
his party, who held war the worst of all evils, were
constrained to speak of Philip as an enemy. They
went further; they attempted, by embassies into the
Peloponnese, to raise some sort of coalition against him.
Among other places they visited Megalopolis, where,
however, their overtures met with but a cold reception.
Athens, as we have had occasion to notice, had made a
blunder some years before in not following the counsel
of Demosthenes when he advised that the Megalopoli-
tans should be supported against Sparta. Now she
found that they were not to be roused into action by
what no doubt seemed to them a comparatively remote
danger. There would, too, have been some political in-
convenience in an alliance with them. Such an alli-
ance would have meant a rupture with Sparta, and a
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? 94 _ DEM OSTHENES.
'friendly attitude towards Thebes, a state against which
Athenian feeling was peculiarly bitter. As soon as
it seemed clear that there was no prospect of organising
a combination throughout Greece against Philip, the
wish for peace grew in strength, and the people were
not averse to opening negotiations with their powerful
enemy.
It is at this juncture that the name of Demosthenes'
famous rival jEschines first comes before us. He rose
to be one of the foremost Athenian orators and states-
men from a very lowly origin. His father kept what
we should call a preparatory: school, and he himself
began life as an inferior actor and a government clerk.
He was a man of immense industry and ability, and
was naturally endowed with all the qualities which go
to make an orator. He was one of the envoys sent
on the mission to the Peloponnese, which had for
its purpose the stirring up of the Greeks against
Macedonian aggression. It appears that he addressed
a very powerful appeal to the Arcadian Assembly at
Megalopolis, fiercely denouncing all traitors to the
liberties of Greece, and stigrnatising Philip as a "blood-
stained barbarian. " Such was the beginning of the
political life of a man who subsequently allowed him-
self to become the means of furthering that "bar- .
barian's" most dangerous designs upon Greece and her
liberties.
In the negotiations of this period between Athens
and Philip, iEschines took a leading part as an envoy.
So, too, did Demosthenes himself; and the hostile
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? PEACE BETWEEN PHILIP AND ATHENS. 95
relations between them, which subsequently gave oc-
casion to their memorable oratorical contest, date from
this time. We have for the most part to depend on
the conflicting statements of the two orators for our
knowledge of the circumstances by which Athens, two
years after the ruin of Olynthus, was drawn into a
shameful peace. It almost seems as if she wilfully
allowed herself to make one stupid blunder after
another. But this is not a true view of the case.
Athens, no doubt, might have done much better under
the guidance of really firm and very skilful statesman-
ship; but it must be remembered that the situation was
extremely complicated, and it was barely possible to
foresee even approximately the course and tendency
of events. After the destruction of Olynthus it must
have seemed clear that Philip was the enemy of
Greece; and that, consequently, it was the duty and
policy of Athens to regard him in this light, and
decline all negotiations with him. But, as we have
seen, 'Athens was not able to organise a confederacy
of the Greek states against him; and if she had de-
cided to fight him, she must have felt that she would
have to fight single-handed. VVhen to this considera-
tion was added the desire to recover some of her own
citizens, now prisoners in Philip's hands--when, too,
she found that he was still courteous and conciliatory---
we cannot be surprised that she shrank from a struggle
which would have tasked her resources to the utter-
most. It might, perhaps, have been better and safer
for her to have made any sacrifice, and have at once
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? 96 ' DEMOSTHENES.
decided on war against the destroyer of thirty Greek
cities; but it was not easy for her to see her way to
such a step alone and unsupported.
The relations, too, of the states of Greece to each
other and to Athens presented many difficulties. N ever
had there been a time when it was harder to unite
them. Sparta, the leading state of the Peloponnese,
could under no circumstances be easily stimulated into
exertions in the Greek cause. Her statesmen were apt
to take a narrow and selfish view of the politics of
Greece. The other states of the Peloponnese were more
afraid of being oppressed by Spartan ascendancy, of
which they had had actual experience, than of danger
from Macedon, of which they knew next to nothing.
Here, therefore, there was but a poor prospect of coali-
tion. Thebes and Phocis, the two remaining states,
were themselves engaged in the Sacred War. Phocis
had appropriated to itself the treasures of the temple
of Delphi, and had thus put itself in a false position
before the Greek world, as being guilty of sacrilege.
And as for Thebes, it had no really great and far-
sighted statesmen; nor had it, to the extent which
Athens still had, a sense of its duty to Greece. Its
policy was often particularly selfish; and even under
the most favourable circumstances, it would have been
most diflicult to have persuaded Thebans to co-operate
heartily with Athenians. So anxious was it to crush
its Phocian neighbours, with whom it had long been
involved in a troublesome war, that when Philip
undertook to crush them it welcomed the offer. The
bait he held out was tempting; but the Thebans ought
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? PEACE BETWEEN PHILIP AND ATHENS. 97'
to have had enough Greek sentiment not to listen to
his proposals, the acceptance of which would probably
lead to the conquest and destruction of a Greek people
by a barbarian. Philip, of course, could justify himself
by saying that he was attacking those who were, in fact,
the enemies of Greece, inasmuch as by the pillage of the
sacred treasures of Delphi they had outraged the best
and truest Greek feeling. But to conquer Phocis he
must be master of Thermopylae; and if he once gained
this position, it could hardly be doubted that he would be
able to do as he pleased, and that Thebes, if he chose to
pick a quarrel with her, would be in the utmost jeopardy.
All this was recognised by Demosthenes, and, as it
seems, by the Athenians generally. They were quite
alive to the importance of garrisoning Thermopylae,
and they sent a force there. But the Phocian leader,
Phalaecus, from some sort of jealousy towards Athens,
and a fear that political intrigues would be set on foot
against him to deprive him of his influence with his
countrymen, refused to admit the Athenian troops into
possession of the important pass. It was now difficult
for the Athenians to know how to act. For anything
they knew to the contrary, Phalaecus might have some
understanding with Philip, and be willing to surrender
the pass to him. This position was perplexing and
disheartening, while to Philip it was a grand oppor-
tunity. If he could contrive to conclude peace with
Athens, and to get the Phocians excluded from it, he
would be able, with some sort of excuse, to occupy
Thermopylae and invade Phocis. And in doing this,
he would have Thebes on his side.
A. 0. S. S. vol. iv. ' G
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? 98 DE. MOSTHENES.
After much negotiation, this was the result which he
managed to accomplish. Peace was concluded between
Philip and Athens, their respective allies being included.
While the negotiations were pending, and the Athe-
nian envoys were waiting at Pella for an interview
with the King, he was in Thrace, and gained some
important successes over the chief of the country,
Cersobleptes, at this time an ally of Athens. The
effect of this was to weaken and endanger the hold
which Athens had on the Thracian Chersonese;-a
specially valuable possession. Indeed, peace was
made ultimately on terms which the Athenians had
not originally contemplated. This, Demosthenes main-
tained, was due to the treacherous connivance of
T/Eschines and of some of the other envoys, who loit-
ered at Pella when they ought to have at once made
their way to Philip in Thrace, and settled matters with
him on the basis which had been mutually agreed on.
But the most terrible mistake was the exclusion of the
Phocians from the treaty. The Athenians were some-
how cajoled into believing that Philip meant them
well; and even Demosthenes did not at the time
protest against the abandonment of Phocis. The
error was irretrievable, for it amounted to nothing
less than letting Philip become master of Thermopylae.
The Phocians could not hold the pass without support.
When they found themselves isolated, their leader,
Ph\alaecus, after being summoned by Philip to give up
possession of it, consented to do so under a convention,
and withdrew his forces. The surrender of Phocis to
Philip followed as a matter of" course. He dealt with
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? PEACE BETWEEN PHILIP AND ATHENS. 99
the country and its towns as he had dealt two years
before with Chalcidice and its towns. Phocis was
utterly ruined. Another Greek state had now fallen
before the Macedonian destroyer, and the prospects of
Greece generally might well seem gloomy.
The calamity, however, was not so shocking to the
Greek world as one might have supposed it would have
been. The Phocians, as has been explained, had been
offenders against the common law and traditions of
Greece, and their destruction might be regarded as a
divine judgment. Even the man who executed it,
though a barbarian according to Greek notions, might
have some claim to be considered as the representative
of a sacred cause. In one sense he had been doing the
very thing which the voice of Greece had been calling
for. The Thebans were especially grateful to him, and
forgot in their blindness the mischief which by this
last stroke he had inflicted on Greece. Now that the
Phocians had ceased to exist as a Greek people, their
place in the Amphictyonic Council was, when the
great Pythian festival came round after a four years'
interval, conferred on Philip. He was even nominated
president of the august ceremony. In all this Thebes
heartily concurred, as also did several smaller states.
Athens and Sparta, indeed, held aloof. But when
Philip's envoys announced to the Athenians the new
position he had acquired with the consent of so many
Greek states, they did not like to refuse concurrence in
what a large part of Greece seemed to approve.
Strong as Philip was before, he was now immensely
strengthened, and fresh chances were open to him for
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? 100 DEMOSTHENES.
interfering actively in Greek politics. Membership of
the Amphictyonic Council was, in fact, equivalent to
naturalisation. Philip was now, in theory at least, a
Greek, and no longer a barbarian. The Athenian
Isocrates could, with a show of reason, address a letter
to him, inviting him to reconcile under his leadership
the great states of Greece, and invade Asia with a view
to the overthrow of the Persian empire and the libera-
tion of the Asiatic Greeks. But the Athenians gene-
rally felt deep anger and vexation at the issue of events,
and could hardly make up their minds to sit still
under the disgrace of the surrender of Thermopylae
and the intrusion of a foreign prince into the heart of
Greece.
Demosthenes, as has been said, had no sympathy
with the ideas of Isocrates. He still clung to the belief
in a general independent Greek world, of which his
own state ought to be the most perfect representative.
Yet on this occasion he spoke in favour of the in-
glorious peace just concluded. Miserable as it was, he
argued that to break it would be to give Philip a pre-
text for uniting other Greek states in war against them.
The tone of his speech is confident and decided. The
peace was bad and dishonourable, no doubt, but to
repudiate it would be simply madness. It would be
putting themselves gratuitously in the wrong. "The
shadow at Delphi," as he calls the subject of the Sacred
war which had been waged between Thebes and Pho-
cis, was not worth fighting for, more especially when
they would have to fight a Greek confederacy. It
could not have been altogether pleasant to Demosthenes
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? COUNSEL OF DEMOSTHENES. 101
to advise acquiescence in a peace which he and his
countrymen generally felt to be humiliating. But as
they had drifted into it, all they could now do was to
make the best of it, and guard themselves from new
aggressions.
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? CHAPTER X.
DEMOSTHENES CONTINUES HIS SPEECHES AGAINST
PHILIP-
FROM the peace of 346 no. we may date a revolution
in the Greek world. Philip had acquired a new posi-
tion, and it was acknowledged that he had henceforth
a right to take a part in Greek politics. Even Demos-
thenes had to recognise the fact of a change of sen-
timent towards him. Isocrates could argue more
plausibly than ever that everything pointed to him as
the true head and champion of Greece, and, eonse--
quently, as the predestined conqueror of Asia, the old
antagonist of Greece. ' '
The peace just concluded was soon seen to be a
thoroughly hollow one. Philip, it was evident, had no
intention of being really bound by it, any longer than
it answered his purpose. This the Athenians could
hardly fail to understand, however much they might
try to deceive themselves; and their feeling towards
him was made up of fear and anger. We might have
thought that he could have at once organised a Greek
confederacy against Persia with almost a certainty of
' success, but he seems to have been too cautious and
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? sPEEOHEs AGAINST PHILIP. 103
astute to expose himself to any serious risks. His policy
was to secure a yet firmer footing in the Greek world.
Athens, he knew, was his only formidable enemy.
There was still a possibility that she might rouse Greece
against him, and overpower him by a coalition of which
she would be the head. He must therefore endeavour
to isolate her by political intrigues, and, by driving her
out of the Chersonese, strike a fatal blow at the com-
merce on which her prosperity largely depended.
With these views he began to meddle with the politics
of the Peloponnese. There circumstances favoured his
designs. He had the opportunity of playing the part
of champion and deliverer to the oppressed. Sparta was
the great object of dread to the people of Argos, of
Megalopolis, and of Messene. They could not imagine
that they had any other enemy to fear. Thebes
had hitherto been their protector, but Thebes was no
longer in a condition to command their confidence.
It was to Philip that they now not unnaturally looked.
It was hardly to be expected that they would abstain
from invoking his aid against a pressing and imme-
diate danger, because it may have been suggested
to them that they were thereby imperilling the best
interests of Greece. What they wanted was help
against Sparta, and this Philip promised them. He
would, he said, soon be with them in person; and
meanwhile he sent them some troops, and bade Sparta
refrain from any attempt on Messeno.
This was a clever movement on Philip's part, and
Athens could not very well protest against it or seek to
thwart it. All that could be said was that, judging
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? 104 DEMOSTHENES.
from the past, it was an interference which ultimately
meant mischief. Demosthenes succeeded in bringing
the Athenians to this point of view. He induced them
to send an embassy, himself being at the head of it,
into the Peloponnese, the express object of which was
to defeat Philip's diplomacy.
? CHAPTER VIII.
DEMOSTHENEB AND MEIDIAS.
AN incident about this time in the life of Demosthenes,
which gave occasion 'to one of his well-known speeches,
illustrates rather strikingly some of the less agreeable
phases of Athenian society. There was, of course, refine-
ment and polish of a high degree, and, on the whole,
the tone and temper of the citizens seem to have been
humane and generous. But still, even at Athens, the
scandals and breaches of good taste and manners, which
one would fear are all but inseparable from democracy,
now and then made their appearance. Political rancour
and party violence reached an outrageous length, and
under their shelter the grossest acts of wrong were from
time to time committed with impunity. A rich man,
if he chose, might have plenty of influence in the State;
and along with this he would have at his command
many opportunities of injuring and oppressing those
whom he personally disliked. It appears that there
'were several such men at Athens--men who no doubt
aspired to imitate the grand airs and fashionable ex-
travagance of Alcibiades, who, clever and accomplished
as he was, at last made himself intolerable to the citi-
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? DEMOSIHENES AND HEIDIAS. 85
zens of a free state. Many of these had nothing but
riches to recommend them, and were pestilent fellows
whose idea of life was really nothing better than coarse,
vulgar rowdyism.
It was the fate of Demosthenes to come into collision
with a man of this class. Early in life, at the time
when he was engaged in his suit with his guardians,
he provoked the enmity of Meidias, a rich, well-born
man, and one of the constant supporters of the peace
party of Eubulus. The quarrel between them originated
in the following singular way. ' The brother of Meidias,
Thrasylochus, offered, according to a practice allowed
at Athens in the case of a trierarchy, or the provid-
ing a war-ship for the State, to exchange properties
with Demosthenes, and, in the event of the offer being
accepted, he gave the guardians privately to understand
that the lawsuit should be dropped. In this_manner'
he sought to defeat the legal proceedings which Demos-'
thenes was taking, and, in fact, to get his just claims"
set aside. The two brothers, it appears, on one occasion'
actually rushed into his house, behaved with excessive'
violence, and used coarse and ribald language in the'''
presence of his sister, then a mere girl. For this outrage'
Demosthenes sued Meidias, and recovered damages; but '
he had not beenable to obtain payment. From that1
time the man became his bitter enemy, and worried and'
persecuted him in every possible way. His animosity'
' was all the more virulent as he was also politically'
opposed to Demosthenes. In the year 351 13. 0. both'
served in a military expedition to Euboea--Meidias in'
the cavalry, Demosthenes as a foot soldier. Neither'
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? 86 DEMOSTHENES.
of them was for any length of time with the'army.
Demosthenes went back to Athens, on the pretext that
he had to undertake the important public duty of chor-
agus or choir-director for his tribe. It seems that he
undertook this quite voluntarily, but-his enemy hinted
that he had merely done so to escape the hardships of
campaigning. And he followed up the taunt with
gross insult and outrage. The choir-director, as we
have seen, usually appeared, when the ceremony was
celebrated, in a special dress, and wore a crown; and
Demosthenes had ordered for the occasion a particularly
magnificent robe and a crown of gold. Meidias con-
trived to break into the embroiderer's shop where
the dress had been prepared, and spoilt the finery in
which Demosthenes was to show himself. He went
further; he struck him on the face before the assembled
audience, and, according to Demosthenes' own account,
was the means of losing him the prize, which his chorus
would have won. The spectators were indignant; and
Meidias was convicted of the crime of sacrilege, as it
would seem, on the very same day by an assembly held.
in the theatre. But the affair could not rest here. It
was for a court of justice to decide how he was to be
punished. Clearly, it was right that Demosthenes
should prosecute him, and this he did. He was thirty-
two years of age at the time. Meidias tried to defeat
the prosecution by indicting Demosthenes on the charge
of desertion of military service, on the ground that he
had left the army in Euboea and returned to Athens.
The indictment came to nothing; but Demosthenes, it
appears, was not decisively successful in his proceed-
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? DEMOSTHENES AND MEIDIAS. 87
ings against Meidias. He was reproached by his rival,
. ? Eschines, with having compromised the affair. At
all events, it is not certain whether the case was ever
brought to trial. But the tone of the extant speech
certainly implies this ; and it is really diflicult to sup-
pose, looking at some passages in which he takes credit
to himself for having rejected a compromise and having
brought the defendant to trial, that it was merely writ-
ten and never delivered. This is, we know, a very
general opinion, and there are reasons for it; but in the
face of the speech as it has come down to us, it seems
a question whether it can be sustained. ' '
The tone of the speech is savage and violent. It is
full of furious invective. But at least it is interesting
as giving us a glimpse into some of the abuses arising
out of wealth and insolence even in a democratical
community like Athens. We have an amusing picture
of Meidias himself; and though perhaps it is a cari-
cature, it was no doubt typical of a really existing
class. He had, it is said, got himself elected a cavalry
officer on the strength of being a rich man, and yet he
could not so much as ride through the marketplace.
His single act of munificence was giving the State a
war-ship, when he knew he was not likely to incur any
personal danger. He delighted in making a vulgar
parade of his wealth. He had built a house at Eleusis,
one of the suburbs of Athens, so big that it darkened
all the houses in the place. He used to take his wife
to the Mysteries, or to any place she had a fancy for
visiting, in a carriage and pair. He would push
through the marketplace and the leading thorough-
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? 88 _ DEMOSTHENES.
fares, talking of his dinners and his drinking-horns so
loud that all the passers-by could hear. " Do not," says
Demosthenes in his speech, "honour and admire things
of this kind--do not judge of liberality by these tests,
whether a man builds splendid houses or has many
female servants, or handsome furniture; but look who
is spirited and liberal in those things which the bulk
of you share the enjoyment of. Meidias, you will
find, has nothing of that kind about him. "
"\Vill you," he asks, "let Meidias escape because
he is rich' ! This is pretty much the cause of his
insolence. Therefore you should rather take away the
means which enable him to be insolent than pardon
him in consideration of them. To allow an audacious
blackguard like him to have wealth at his command
is to put arms in his hands against yourselves. " "
"I take it you all know his disposition, his offensive
and overbearing behaviour; and some of you, I daresay,
have been wondering about things which they know
themselves, but have not heard from me now. Many
of the injured parties do not even like to tell all that
they have suffered, dreading this man's litigiousness,
and the fortune which makes such a despicable fallow'
strong and terrible. For when a rogue and a_bully>is'
supported by wealth and power, it is a wall of defence
against any attack. Let Meidias be stripped of his
possessions, and most likely he will not play the bully.
If he should, he will be less regarded than the humblest
man among you; he will rail and bawl to no purpose
then, and be punished for any misbehaviour like the
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? DEMOSTHENES AND MEIDIAS. 89
rest of us. Now, it seems, Polyeuctus and Timocrates
and the ragamuflin Euctemon are his bodyguard ;
these are a sort of mercenaries that he keeps about
him, and others also besides them, a confederate band
of witnesses, who never trouble you openly, but by
simply nodding their heads afiirm and lie with perfect
case. By the powers, I do not believe they get any
good from him; but they are wonderful people for
making up to the rich, and attending on them, and
giving evidence. All this, I take it, is a danger to any
of you that live quietly by yourselves as well as you
can; and therefore it is that you assemble together, in
order that, though taken separately you are over-
matched by any one either in friends or riches, or in
anything else, you may collectively be more than a
match for him and put a stop to his insolence. "
Meidias, according to Demosthenes, was at heart a
coward, and would be sure to make an abject appeal
to the people's pity. The following passage is towards
the end of the speech :-- '
"I know he will have his children in court and
Whine; he will talk very humbly, shedding tears and
making himself as piteous as he can. Yet the more he
'humbles himself, the more ought you to detest him.
'Why! Because if the outrageousness and violence of
his conduct arose out of his inability to be humble, it
would have been fair to make some allowance for his
temper, and the accident which made him what he is,
'But if_ he knows how to behave himself properly when
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? 90 DEMOSTHENES.
he likes, and has adopted a different line of conduct by
choice, surely it is quite evident that if he eludes
justice now, he will again become the same Meidias
that you know him for. You must not listen to him,
then; you must not let the present occasion, when he
is playing the hypocrite, have more weight and influence
with you than the whole past of which you have had
experience.
"Perhaps he will say of me, This man is /arliiiratol'.
Well; if one who advises what he thinks for your
good, without being troublesome or intrusive, is an
orator, I would not deny or refuse the name. But if
an orator be what (to my knowledge and to your know-
ledge) certain of our speakers are--irnpudent fellows,
enriched at your expense--I can hardly be that; for
I have received nothing from you, but spent all my
substance upon you, except a mere trifle. Probably,
also,' Meidias will say that all my speech is prepared.
I admit that I have got it up as well'as I possibly
could. I were a complete simpleton indeed, if, having
suffered and still suffering such injuries, I took no pains
about the mode of stating them to you. I maintain
that has composed my speech; he who has
supplied the facts which the speech is about, may most
fairly be deemed its author, not he who has merely pre-
pared it or studied how to lay an honest case before
you. " \
The speech is not, we think, one of Demosthenes'
best; but it is often inger1_ious, and it certainly shows
singu_l_a_r power of invective. It suggests that what we
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? DEMOSTHENES AND MEIDIAS. _ 91 _
should call very loose practice on the part of an advo-
cate was tolerated in an Athenian court. Demosthenes
by no means confines himself to the outrage committed
on him by Meidias, but speaks of the injuries he had
inflicted on others, and indeed attacks generally the
man's whole life and character. The attack may have
been deserved; still, the manner of it, and the circum-
stances under which it was made, point to the exist-
ence of dangers at Athens to which any citizen might
suddenly find himself exposed. '
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? CHAPTER IX.
PHILIP MASTER OF THERMOPYLE AND OF PHOCIS--
PEACE BETWEEN HIM AND A'l'HENS--COUNSEL OF
DEMOSTHENES.
WE now enter on a period of melancholy disgrace and
humiliation for the Greek race. Within two years the
barbarian destroyer of Olynthus becomes master of the
key to Greece, the famous pass of Thermopylae, and of
the whole of Phocis, the country in which stood the
mountains of Parnassus, and the old and venerable
temple of Delphi. Events more terrific and momentous,
says Demosthenes in one of his speeches, had never
occurred either in his own time or in that of any of his
predecessors. Athens was forced into a miserably
ignominious peace, and many of her citizens had
stooped to the infamy of being the mere tools and
paid agents of the " man of Macedon. " Even Isocrates,
true Greek as he was in all his sympathies, as well as
thoroughly upright and high-minded, was now con-
vinced that the best wisdom for Greece was to put
itself under the leadership of this wonderfully success-
ful prince, and allow him to conduct its united armies
to the conquest of Persia.
t'
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? PEACE BETWEEN PHILIP AND ATHENS. 93
The history of these five years is somewhat intricate.
It will be enough for the present purpose to summarise
the general course of events. The period was mainly
occupied in negotiations on the part of Athens with
Philip. These were ill-managed, and had a most dis-
astrous conclusion. One motive which no doubt
prompted them was, the very natural desire of recover-
'ing those Atheniangcitizens who had been captured
with the Olyfithiansfl Toward Athens Philip had usu-
ally shown himself gracious and conciliatory. So, when
the relatives of two of the captives, both men of high
position, presented themselves as suppliants before the
_Assembly, it was decided to communicate with Philip.
'A favourable answer was received; and we have reason
to believe that now there was an inclination in favour
of peace. At first it was otherwise_ Even Eubulus and
his party, who held war the worst of all evils, were
constrained to speak of Philip as an enemy. They
went further; they attempted, by embassies into the
Peloponnese, to raise some sort of coalition against him.
Among other places they visited Megalopolis, where,
however, their overtures met with but a cold reception.
Athens, as we have had occasion to notice, had made a
blunder some years before in not following the counsel
of Demosthenes when he advised that the Megalopoli-
tans should be supported against Sparta. Now she
found that they were not to be roused into action by
what no doubt seemed to them a comparatively remote
danger. There would, too, have been some political in-
convenience in an alliance with them. Such an alli-
ance would have meant a rupture with Sparta, and a
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? 94 _ DEM OSTHENES.
'friendly attitude towards Thebes, a state against which
Athenian feeling was peculiarly bitter. As soon as
it seemed clear that there was no prospect of organising
a combination throughout Greece against Philip, the
wish for peace grew in strength, and the people were
not averse to opening negotiations with their powerful
enemy.
It is at this juncture that the name of Demosthenes'
famous rival jEschines first comes before us. He rose
to be one of the foremost Athenian orators and states-
men from a very lowly origin. His father kept what
we should call a preparatory: school, and he himself
began life as an inferior actor and a government clerk.
He was a man of immense industry and ability, and
was naturally endowed with all the qualities which go
to make an orator. He was one of the envoys sent
on the mission to the Peloponnese, which had for
its purpose the stirring up of the Greeks against
Macedonian aggression. It appears that he addressed
a very powerful appeal to the Arcadian Assembly at
Megalopolis, fiercely denouncing all traitors to the
liberties of Greece, and stigrnatising Philip as a "blood-
stained barbarian. " Such was the beginning of the
political life of a man who subsequently allowed him-
self to become the means of furthering that "bar- .
barian's" most dangerous designs upon Greece and her
liberties.
In the negotiations of this period between Athens
and Philip, iEschines took a leading part as an envoy.
So, too, did Demosthenes himself; and the hostile
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? PEACE BETWEEN PHILIP AND ATHENS. 95
relations between them, which subsequently gave oc-
casion to their memorable oratorical contest, date from
this time. We have for the most part to depend on
the conflicting statements of the two orators for our
knowledge of the circumstances by which Athens, two
years after the ruin of Olynthus, was drawn into a
shameful peace. It almost seems as if she wilfully
allowed herself to make one stupid blunder after
another. But this is not a true view of the case.
Athens, no doubt, might have done much better under
the guidance of really firm and very skilful statesman-
ship; but it must be remembered that the situation was
extremely complicated, and it was barely possible to
foresee even approximately the course and tendency
of events. After the destruction of Olynthus it must
have seemed clear that Philip was the enemy of
Greece; and that, consequently, it was the duty and
policy of Athens to regard him in this light, and
decline all negotiations with him. But, as we have
seen, 'Athens was not able to organise a confederacy
of the Greek states against him; and if she had de-
cided to fight him, she must have felt that she would
have to fight single-handed. VVhen to this considera-
tion was added the desire to recover some of her own
citizens, now prisoners in Philip's hands--when, too,
she found that he was still courteous and conciliatory---
we cannot be surprised that she shrank from a struggle
which would have tasked her resources to the utter-
most. It might, perhaps, have been better and safer
for her to have made any sacrifice, and have at once
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? 96 ' DEMOSTHENES.
decided on war against the destroyer of thirty Greek
cities; but it was not easy for her to see her way to
such a step alone and unsupported.
The relations, too, of the states of Greece to each
other and to Athens presented many difficulties. N ever
had there been a time when it was harder to unite
them. Sparta, the leading state of the Peloponnese,
could under no circumstances be easily stimulated into
exertions in the Greek cause. Her statesmen were apt
to take a narrow and selfish view of the politics of
Greece. The other states of the Peloponnese were more
afraid of being oppressed by Spartan ascendancy, of
which they had had actual experience, than of danger
from Macedon, of which they knew next to nothing.
Here, therefore, there was but a poor prospect of coali-
tion. Thebes and Phocis, the two remaining states,
were themselves engaged in the Sacred War. Phocis
had appropriated to itself the treasures of the temple
of Delphi, and had thus put itself in a false position
before the Greek world, as being guilty of sacrilege.
And as for Thebes, it had no really great and far-
sighted statesmen; nor had it, to the extent which
Athens still had, a sense of its duty to Greece. Its
policy was often particularly selfish; and even under
the most favourable circumstances, it would have been
most diflicult to have persuaded Thebans to co-operate
heartily with Athenians. So anxious was it to crush
its Phocian neighbours, with whom it had long been
involved in a troublesome war, that when Philip
undertook to crush them it welcomed the offer. The
bait he held out was tempting; but the Thebans ought
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? PEACE BETWEEN PHILIP AND ATHENS. 97'
to have had enough Greek sentiment not to listen to
his proposals, the acceptance of which would probably
lead to the conquest and destruction of a Greek people
by a barbarian. Philip, of course, could justify himself
by saying that he was attacking those who were, in fact,
the enemies of Greece, inasmuch as by the pillage of the
sacred treasures of Delphi they had outraged the best
and truest Greek feeling. But to conquer Phocis he
must be master of Thermopylae; and if he once gained
this position, it could hardly be doubted that he would be
able to do as he pleased, and that Thebes, if he chose to
pick a quarrel with her, would be in the utmost jeopardy.
All this was recognised by Demosthenes, and, as it
seems, by the Athenians generally. They were quite
alive to the importance of garrisoning Thermopylae,
and they sent a force there. But the Phocian leader,
Phalaecus, from some sort of jealousy towards Athens,
and a fear that political intrigues would be set on foot
against him to deprive him of his influence with his
countrymen, refused to admit the Athenian troops into
possession of the important pass. It was now difficult
for the Athenians to know how to act. For anything
they knew to the contrary, Phalaecus might have some
understanding with Philip, and be willing to surrender
the pass to him. This position was perplexing and
disheartening, while to Philip it was a grand oppor-
tunity. If he could contrive to conclude peace with
Athens, and to get the Phocians excluded from it, he
would be able, with some sort of excuse, to occupy
Thermopylae and invade Phocis. And in doing this,
he would have Thebes on his side.
A. 0. S. S. vol. iv. ' G
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? 98 DE. MOSTHENES.
After much negotiation, this was the result which he
managed to accomplish. Peace was concluded between
Philip and Athens, their respective allies being included.
While the negotiations were pending, and the Athe-
nian envoys were waiting at Pella for an interview
with the King, he was in Thrace, and gained some
important successes over the chief of the country,
Cersobleptes, at this time an ally of Athens. The
effect of this was to weaken and endanger the hold
which Athens had on the Thracian Chersonese;-a
specially valuable possession. Indeed, peace was
made ultimately on terms which the Athenians had
not originally contemplated. This, Demosthenes main-
tained, was due to the treacherous connivance of
T/Eschines and of some of the other envoys, who loit-
ered at Pella when they ought to have at once made
their way to Philip in Thrace, and settled matters with
him on the basis which had been mutually agreed on.
But the most terrible mistake was the exclusion of the
Phocians from the treaty. The Athenians were some-
how cajoled into believing that Philip meant them
well; and even Demosthenes did not at the time
protest against the abandonment of Phocis. The
error was irretrievable, for it amounted to nothing
less than letting Philip become master of Thermopylae.
The Phocians could not hold the pass without support.
When they found themselves isolated, their leader,
Ph\alaecus, after being summoned by Philip to give up
possession of it, consented to do so under a convention,
and withdrew his forces. The surrender of Phocis to
Philip followed as a matter of" course. He dealt with
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? PEACE BETWEEN PHILIP AND ATHENS. 99
the country and its towns as he had dealt two years
before with Chalcidice and its towns. Phocis was
utterly ruined. Another Greek state had now fallen
before the Macedonian destroyer, and the prospects of
Greece generally might well seem gloomy.
The calamity, however, was not so shocking to the
Greek world as one might have supposed it would have
been. The Phocians, as has been explained, had been
offenders against the common law and traditions of
Greece, and their destruction might be regarded as a
divine judgment. Even the man who executed it,
though a barbarian according to Greek notions, might
have some claim to be considered as the representative
of a sacred cause. In one sense he had been doing the
very thing which the voice of Greece had been calling
for. The Thebans were especially grateful to him, and
forgot in their blindness the mischief which by this
last stroke he had inflicted on Greece. Now that the
Phocians had ceased to exist as a Greek people, their
place in the Amphictyonic Council was, when the
great Pythian festival came round after a four years'
interval, conferred on Philip. He was even nominated
president of the august ceremony. In all this Thebes
heartily concurred, as also did several smaller states.
Athens and Sparta, indeed, held aloof. But when
Philip's envoys announced to the Athenians the new
position he had acquired with the consent of so many
Greek states, they did not like to refuse concurrence in
what a large part of Greece seemed to approve.
Strong as Philip was before, he was now immensely
strengthened, and fresh chances were open to him for
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? 100 DEMOSTHENES.
interfering actively in Greek politics. Membership of
the Amphictyonic Council was, in fact, equivalent to
naturalisation. Philip was now, in theory at least, a
Greek, and no longer a barbarian. The Athenian
Isocrates could, with a show of reason, address a letter
to him, inviting him to reconcile under his leadership
the great states of Greece, and invade Asia with a view
to the overthrow of the Persian empire and the libera-
tion of the Asiatic Greeks. But the Athenians gene-
rally felt deep anger and vexation at the issue of events,
and could hardly make up their minds to sit still
under the disgrace of the surrender of Thermopylae
and the intrusion of a foreign prince into the heart of
Greece.
Demosthenes, as has been said, had no sympathy
with the ideas of Isocrates. He still clung to the belief
in a general independent Greek world, of which his
own state ought to be the most perfect representative.
Yet on this occasion he spoke in favour of the in-
glorious peace just concluded. Miserable as it was, he
argued that to break it would be to give Philip a pre-
text for uniting other Greek states in war against them.
The tone of his speech is confident and decided. The
peace was bad and dishonourable, no doubt, but to
repudiate it would be simply madness. It would be
putting themselves gratuitously in the wrong. "The
shadow at Delphi," as he calls the subject of the Sacred
war which had been waged between Thebes and Pho-
cis, was not worth fighting for, more especially when
they would have to fight a Greek confederacy. It
could not have been altogether pleasant to Demosthenes
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? COUNSEL OF DEMOSTHENES. 101
to advise acquiescence in a peace which he and his
countrymen generally felt to be humiliating. But as
they had drifted into it, all they could now do was to
make the best of it, and guard themselves from new
aggressions.
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? CHAPTER X.
DEMOSTHENES CONTINUES HIS SPEECHES AGAINST
PHILIP-
FROM the peace of 346 no. we may date a revolution
in the Greek world. Philip had acquired a new posi-
tion, and it was acknowledged that he had henceforth
a right to take a part in Greek politics. Even Demos-
thenes had to recognise the fact of a change of sen-
timent towards him. Isocrates could argue more
plausibly than ever that everything pointed to him as
the true head and champion of Greece, and, eonse--
quently, as the predestined conqueror of Asia, the old
antagonist of Greece. ' '
The peace just concluded was soon seen to be a
thoroughly hollow one. Philip, it was evident, had no
intention of being really bound by it, any longer than
it answered his purpose. This the Athenians could
hardly fail to understand, however much they might
try to deceive themselves; and their feeling towards
him was made up of fear and anger. We might have
thought that he could have at once organised a Greek
confederacy against Persia with almost a certainty of
' success, but he seems to have been too cautious and
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? sPEEOHEs AGAINST PHILIP. 103
astute to expose himself to any serious risks. His policy
was to secure a yet firmer footing in the Greek world.
Athens, he knew, was his only formidable enemy.
There was still a possibility that she might rouse Greece
against him, and overpower him by a coalition of which
she would be the head. He must therefore endeavour
to isolate her by political intrigues, and, by driving her
out of the Chersonese, strike a fatal blow at the com-
merce on which her prosperity largely depended.
With these views he began to meddle with the politics
of the Peloponnese. There circumstances favoured his
designs. He had the opportunity of playing the part
of champion and deliverer to the oppressed. Sparta was
the great object of dread to the people of Argos, of
Megalopolis, and of Messene. They could not imagine
that they had any other enemy to fear. Thebes
had hitherto been their protector, but Thebes was no
longer in a condition to command their confidence.
It was to Philip that they now not unnaturally looked.
It was hardly to be expected that they would abstain
from invoking his aid against a pressing and imme-
diate danger, because it may have been suggested
to them that they were thereby imperilling the best
interests of Greece. What they wanted was help
against Sparta, and this Philip promised them. He
would, he said, soon be with them in person; and
meanwhile he sent them some troops, and bade Sparta
refrain from any attempt on Messeno.
This was a clever movement on Philip's part, and
Athens could not very well protest against it or seek to
thwart it. All that could be said was that, judging
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? 104 DEMOSTHENES.
from the past, it was an interference which ultimately
meant mischief. Demosthenes succeeded in bringing
the Athenians to this point of view. He induced them
to send an embassy, himself being at the head of it,
into the Peloponnese, the express object of which was
to defeat Philip's diplomacy.
