William Jackson Brodribb

“ No; they will receive any people, even those they distrust more than us, sooner than surrender their city to Philip—unless, indeed, he is beforehand with them and captures it. If, then, we are unable to sail northward, and there be no help at hand, nothing can prevent their destruction. Well; let us say the Byzantines are infatuated and besotted. Very likely; yet they must be rescued, because it is good for Athens. Nor is it clear that he will not attack the Chersonese; nay, if we may judge from the letter he sent us, he says he will chastise the people in the Chersonese. ”

“ While the mischief is only coming and preparing, whilst we hear one another speak, I wish every man, though he know it well, to be reminded who it was persuaded you to abandon Phocis and Thermopylæ, by the possession of which Philip commands the road to Attica and Peloponnese, and has brought it to this, that you have now to deliberate, not about claims and interests abroad, but about the defence of your home and a war in Attica, which will be a grievous shock to every citizen when it comes ”

“ This was monstrous, and implied a fatal degeneracy.
"I observe," says the orator, "that all people beginning from yourselves have conceded to Philip a right which in former days was the subject of contest in every Greek war. What is this? The right of doing what he pleases, openly fleecing and pillaging the Greeks one after another, attacking and enslaving their cities. You were at the head of the Greeks for seventy-three years, the Lacedæmonians for twenty-nine, and the Thebans had some power in these latter days after the battle of Leuctra. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This is indeed a powerful denunciation of a state of things which we know to be very possible, in which the corruption of public men is treated as a joke, and when exposed and detected, is hardly thought to deserve reprobation and punishment. ”

“ In the following passage he inveighs against his political opponents, and the extreme licence of speech allowed to them in practically advocating the interests of Philip:—
"This, you must be convinced, is a struggle for existence. You cannot overcome your enemies abroad till you have punished your enemies, his ministers, at home. They will be the stumbling-blocks which prevent you reaching the others. Why, do you suppose, Philip now insults you? To other people he at least renders services though he deceives them, while he is already threatening you. ”

“ An able and restless despot, at the head of a well-trained standing army, will often, for a time at least, have a decided advantage in war over a free and constitutional state.
The next year, 340 B.C., events occurred which completely justified the warnings of Demosthenes. Philip attempted the conquest of the cities on the Propontis, Perinthus and Byzantium. He was foiled by prompt intervention from Athens. There was for a brief space a doubt whether Byzantium would accept Athenian aid, so thoroughly had the city become estranged from Athens in consequence of the Social War. ”

“ For as to ships and men, and revenues and abundance of other material—all, in fact, that may be reckoned as constituting national strength, assuredly the Greeks of our day are more fully and perfectly supplied with such advantages than Greeks of the olden times. ”

“ The people, he maintains, ought to deal with their enemies before they call their own servants to account. It was very well for Philip to complain of an infringement of the peace in this particular instance, but was it not notorious that he had himself deprived Athens of her own possessions? ”

“ The speech in question has always been regarded as one of singular power. As far as we know, nothing new had occurred; but Philip was still in Thrace, threatening the Chersonese and the northern shores of the Propontis, and clearly had designs on Perinthus and Byzantium. Demosthenes repeats in substance the arguments he had recently urged. Greece, he says, is in the utmost peril from its miserable divisions and apathy, and from the unique position which it has allowed Philip to attain. ”

“ The favourable moments for enterprise which fortune frequently offers to the careless against the vigilant, to them that will do nothing against those that discharge their entire duty, could not be bought from orators or generals; no more could mutual concord, nor distrust of tyrants and barbarians, nor anything of the kind. But now all such principles have been sold as in open market, and principles imported in exchange by which Greece is ruined and diseased. What are they? Envy, when a man gets a bribe ”