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DEMOSTHENES
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DEMOSTHENES
, the See also:great See also:Attic orator and statesman, was See also:born in 384 (or 383) B.C
.
His See also:father, who See also:bore the same name, was an Athenian See also:citizen belonging to the deme of Paeania
.
His See also:mother, Cleobule, was the daughter of Gylon, a citizen who had been active in procuring the See also:protection of the See also:kings of See also:Bosporus for the Athenian See also:colony of Nymphaeon in the See also:Crimea, and whose wife was a native of that region
.
On these grounds the adversaries of Demosthenes, in after-days, used absurdly to taunt him with a traitorous or See also:barbarian ancestry
.
The boy had a See also:bitter fore-See also:taste of See also:life
.
He was seven years old when his father died, leaving See also:property (in a manufactory of swords, and another of upholstery) See also:worth about £3500, which, invested as it seems to have been (20 % was not thought exorbitant),' would have yielded rather more than £60o a See also:year
.
£300 a year was a very comfortable income at See also:Athens, and it was possible to live decently on a tenth of it
.
See also:Nicias, a very See also:rich See also:man, had property See also:equivalent, probably, to not more than £7.000 a year
.
Demosthenes was born then, to a handsome, though not a great See also:fortune
.
But his guardians—two nephews of his father, Aphobus and Demophon, and one Therippides—abused their See also:trust, and handed over to Demosthenes, when he came of See also:age, rather less than one-seventh of his patrimony, perhaps between £50 and £6o a year
.
Demosthenes, after studying with See also:Isaeus (q.v.)—then the great See also:master of forensic eloquence and of Attic See also:law, especially in will cases 1—brought an See also:action against Aphobus, and gained a See also:verdict for about £2400
.
But it does not appear that he got the See also:money; and, after some more fruitless proceedings against Onetor, the See also:brother-in-law of Aphobus, the See also:matter was dropped,—not, however, before his relatives had managed to throw a public See also:burden (the equipment of a See also:ship of See also:war) on their See also:late See also:
He now became a professional writer of speeches or pleas (Xoyo'ypa4os) for the law courts, sometimes speaking himself
.
Biographers have delighted to relate how painfully Demosthenes made him-self a tolerable See also:speaker,—how, with pebbles in his mouth, he tried his lungs against the waves, how he declaimed as he ran up See also:
But its inner meaning, the See also:secret of its indomitable vigour, the law which harmonizes its apparent contrasts, cannot be understood unless it is regarded as a whole
.
Still less can it be appreciated in all its large See also:wisdom and sustained self-mastery if it is viewed merely as a See also:duel between the ablest See also:champion and the craftiest enemy of See also:Greek freedom
.
The See also:time indeed came when Demosthenes and See also:
Wherever the cry of the oppressed goes up from Greek against Greek, it was the See also:voice of Athens which should first remind the oppressor that Hellene differed from barbarian in postponing the use of force to the persuasions of equal law
.
Wherever a barbarian See also:hand offered wrong to any city of the Hellenic sisterhood, it was the See also:arm of Athens which should first be stretched forth in the See also:holy strength of See also:Apollo the Averter
.
Wherever among her own See also:children the See also:ancient See also:loyalty was yielding to love of See also:pleasure or of See also:base gain, there, above all, it was the See also:duty of Athens to see that the central See also:hearth of Hellas was kept pure
.
Athens must never again seek " See also:empire " in the sense which became odious under the See also:influence of See also:Cleon and Hyperbolus,—when, to use the See also:image of See also:Aristophanes, the See also:allies were as Babylonian slaves grinding in the Athenian See also: The old type of the eminent citizen, who was at once statesman and See also:general, had become almost See also:extinct . Politics were now managed by a small circle of politicians . See also:Wars were conducted by professional soldiers -whose troops were chiefly mercenaries, and who were usually regarded by the politicians either as See also:instruments or as enemies . The See also:mass of the citizens took no active See also:interest in public affairs . But, The' fiend . though indifferent to principles, they had quickly sensi- tive partialities for men, and it was necessary to keep them in See also:good See also:humour . See also:Pericles had introduced the practice of giving a PoNticaf careerand creed . small See also:bounty from the See also:treasury to the poorer citizens, for the purpose of enabling them to attend the See also:theatre at the great festivals, —in other words, for the purpose of bringing them under the concentrated influence of the best Attic culture . A See also:provision eminently See also:wise for the age of Pericles easily became a See also:mischief when the once See also:honourable name of " See also:demagogue " began to mean a flatterer of the See also:mob . Before the end of the Peloponnesian War the festival-money (theoricon) was abolished . A few years after the restoration of the See also:democracy it was again introduced . But until 354 B.C. it had never been more than a gratuity, of which the See also:payment depended on the treasury having a surplus . In 354 B.C . See also:Eubulus became steward of the treasury . He was an able man, with a special See also:talent for See also:finance, free from all taint of See also:personal corruption, and sincerely solicitous for the See also:honour of Athens, but enslaved to popularity, and without principles of policy . His first measure was to make the festival-money a permanent See also:item in the See also:budget . Thenceforth this bounty was in reality very much what See also:Demades afterwards called it,—the See also:cement (KOXXa) of the democracy . Years before the danger from Macedon was urgent, Demosthenes had begun the work of his life,—the effort to lift the spirit Forensic of Athens, to revive the old civic loyalty, to rouse the speeches city into taking that See also:place and performing that part in Puhiie which her own welfare as well as the safety of Greece causes. prescribed . His formally political speeches must never be considered apart from his forensic speeches in public causes . The Athenian See also:procedure against the proposer of an unconstitutional law—i.e. of a law incompatible with existing See also:laws—had a direct tendency to make the law See also:court, in such cases, a political See also:arena . The same tendency was indirectly exerted by the tolerance of Athenian juries (in the See also:absence of a presiding See also:expert like a See also:judge) for irrelevant matter, since it was usually easy for a speaker to make See also:capital out of the adversary's political antecedents . But the forensic speeches of Demosthenes for public causes are not only political in this general sense . They are documents, as indispensable as the Olynthiacs or See also:Philippics, for his own political career . Only by taking them along with the formally political speeches, and regarding the whole as one unbroken See also:series, can we see clearly the full See also:scope of the task which he set before him,—a task in which his long resistance to Philip was only the most dramatic incident, and in which his real achievement is not' to be measured by the event of Chaeronea . A forensic speech, composed for a public cause, opens the political career of Demosthenes with a protest against a See also:signal abuse . In 355 B.C., at the age of twenty-nine, he wrote the speech " Against See also:Androtion." This combats on legal grounds a proposal that the out-going See also:senate should receive the honour of a See also:golden See also:crown . In its larger aspect, it is a denunciation of the corrupt See also:system which that senate represented, and especially of the manner in which the treasury had been administered by Aristophon . In 354 B.C . Demosthenes composed and spoke the oration " Against See also:Leptines," who had effected a slender saving for the state by the expedient of revoking those hereditary exemptions from See also:taxation which had at various times been conferred in recognition of distinguished merit . The descendants of See also:Harmodius and Aristogeiton alone had been excepted from the operation of the law . This was the first time that the voice of Demosthenes himself had been heard on the public concerns of Athens, and the utterance was a worthy prelude to the career of a statesman . He answers the See also:advocates of the See also:retrenchment by pointing out that the public interest will not ultimately be served by a wholesale violation of the public faith . In the same year he delivered his first strictly political speech, " On the See also:Navy Boards " (Symrnories) . The Athenians, irritated by the support which See also:Artaxerxes had lately given to the revolt of their allies, and excited by rumours of his hostile preparations, were feverishly eager for a war with See also:Persia . Demosthenes urges that such an enterprise would at See also:present be useless; that it would fail to unite Greece; that the energies of the city.should be reserved for a real emergency; but that, before the city can successfully See also:cope with any war, there must be a better organization of resources, and,first of all, a reform of the navy, which he outlines with characteristic lucidity and precision . Two years later (352 B.C.) he is found dealing with a more definite question of See also:foreign policy . Sparta, favoured by the depression of See also:Thebes in the Phocian War, was threatening Megalopolis . Both Sparta and Megalopolis sent embassies to Athens . Demosthenes supported Megalopolis . The ruin of Megalopolis would mean, he argued, the return of Spartan domination in the See also:Peloponnesus . Athenians must not favour the tyranny of any one city . They must respect the rights of all the cities, and thus promote unity based on mutual confidence . In the same year Demosthenes wrote the speech " Against Timocrates," to be spoken by the same Diodorus who had before prosecuted Androtion, and who now combated an See also:attempt to See also:screen Androtion and others from the penalties of See also:embezzlement . The speech " Against Aristocrates," also of 352 B.C., reproves that foreign policy of feeble makeshifts which was now popular at Athens . The Athenian See also:tenure of the Thracian See also:Chersonese partly depended for its See also:security on the good-will of the Thracian See also:prince Cersobleptes . See also:Charidemus, a soldier of fortune who had already played Athens false, was now the brother-in-law and the favourite of Cersobleptes . Aristocrates proposed that the See also:person of Charidemus should be invested with a special sanctity, by the enactment that whoever attempted his life should be an outlaw from all dominions of Athens . Demosthenes points out that such adulation is as futile as it is fulsome . Athens can secure the permanence of her foreign possessions only in one way—by being strong enough to hold them . Thus, between 355 and 352, Demosthenes had laid down the See also:main lines of his policy . Domestic See also:administration must be purified . Statesmen must be made to feel that they are responsible to the state . They must not be allowed Principles been at war with Philip on See also:account of his seizure of Athens and See also:Amphipolis . Meanwhile he had destroyed Potidaea Philip. and founded See also:Philippi . On the Thracian coasts he had become master of See also:Abdera and Maronea . On the Thessalian See also:coast he had acquired Methone . In a second invasion of See also:Thessaly, he had overthrown the Phocians under Onomarchus, and had advanced to See also:Thermopylae, to find the See also:gates of Greece closed against him by an Athenian force . He had then marched to Heraeon on the Propontis, and had dictated a peace to Cersobleptes . He had formed an See also:alliance with Cardia, See also:Perinthus and See also:Byzantium . Lastly, he had begun to show designs on the great Confederacy of See also:Olynthus, the more warlike See also:Miletus of the See also:North . The First Philippic of Demosthenes was spoken in 351 B.C . The Third Philippic—the latest of the extant political speeches— was spoken in 341 B.C . Between these he delivered eight political orations, of which seven are directly concerned with Philip . The whole series falls into two great divisions . The first See also:division comprises those speeches which were spoken against Philip while he was still a foreign See also:power threatening Greece from without . Such are the First Philippic and the three orations for Olynthus . The second division comprises the speeches of policy . to anticipate See also:judgment on their deserts by voting each other golden crowns . They must not think to screen misappropriation of public money by getting partisans to pass new laws about state-debtors . Foreign policy must be guided by a larger and more provident conception of Athenian interests . When public excitement demands a foreign war, Athens must not See also:rush into it without asking whether it is necessary, whether it will have Greek support, and whether she herself is ready for it . When a strong Greek city threatens a weak one, and seeks to See also:purchase Athenian connivance with the bribe of a border-See also:town, Athens must remember that duty and prudence alike command her to respect the See also:independence of all Greeks . When it is See also:pro-posed, by way of See also:insurance on Athenian possessions abroad, to flatter the favourite of a doubtful ally, Athens must remember that such devices will not avail a power which has no See also:army except on See also:paper, and no See also:ships See also:fit to leave their moorings . But the time had gone by when Athenians could have tranquil leisure for domestic reform . A danger, calling for prompt action, had at last come very near . For six years Athens had spoken against Philip when, by See also:admission to the Amphictyonic See also:Council, he had now won his way within the circle of the Greek states, and when the issue was no longer between Greece and See also:Macedonia, but between the Greek and Macedonian parties in Greece . Such are the speech " On the Peace," the speech " On the See also:Embassy," the speech " On the Chersonese," the Second and Third Philippics . The First Philippic, spoken early in 351 B.C., was no sudden See also:note of alarm See also:drawing See also:attention to an unnoticed peril . On the contrary, the Assembly was weary of the subject . For six years the war with Philip had been a theme of barren talk . Demosthenes urges that it is time to do some-thing, and to do it with a See also:plan . Athens fighting Philip has fared, he says, like an See also:amateur boxer opposed to a skilled pugilist . The helpless hands have only followed blows which a trained See also:eye should have taught them to See also:parry . An Athenian force must be stationed in the north, at See also:Lemnos or See also:Thasos . Of 2000 See also:infantry and 200 See also:cavalry at least one quarter must be Athenian citizens capable of directing the mercenaries . Later in the same year Demosthenes did another service to the cause of See also:national freedom . See also:Rhodes, severed by its own See also:act from the Athenian Confederacy, had since 355 been virtually subject to See also:Mausolus, prince (Svvav-rgr) of See also:Caria, himself a tributary of Persia . Mausolus died in 351, and was succeeded by his widow See also:Artemisia . The democratic party in Rhodes now appealed to Athens for help in throwing off the Carian yoke . Demosthenes supported their application in his speech " For the Rhodians." No act of his life was a truer See also:proof of statesmanship . He failed . But at least he had once more warned Athens that the cause of political freedom was everywhere her own, and that, wherever that cause was forsaken, there a new danger was created both for Athens and for Greece . Next year (35o) an Athenian force under See also:Phocion was sent to See also:Euboea, in support of Plutarchus, See also:tyrant of See also:Eretria, against the See also:faction of See also:Cleitarchus . Demosthenes protested against Euboean spending strength, needed for greater See also:objects, on the war . See also:local quarrels of a See also:despot . Phocion won a victory at Tamynae .
But the " inglorious and costly war " entailed an outlay of more than £12,000 on the See also:ransom of captives alone, and ended in the See also:total destruction of Athenian influence through-out Euboea
.
That See also:island was now See also:left an open See also: " Better now than later," is the thought of the First Olynthiac . The Second argues that Philip's strength is overrated . The Third—spoken in 348—carries us into the midst of action.' It deals with See also:practical details . The festival-fund must be used for the war . The citizens must serve in person . ' It is genei°ally agreed that the Third Olynthiac is the latest; but the question of the See also:order of the First and Second has been much discussed . See See also:Grote (See also:History of Greece, chap . 88, appendix), who prefers the arrangement ii. i. iii., and See also:Blass, See also:Die attische Beredsamkeit, p . 319.A few months later, Olynthus and the See also:thirty-two towns of the confederacy were swept from the See also:earth . Men could walk over their sites, Demosthenes said seven years afterwards, without knowing that such cities had existed . It was now certain that Philip could not be stopped outside of Greece . The question was, What point within Greece shall he be allowed to reach ? Eubulus and his party, with that versatility which is the See also:privilege of political vagueness, now began to See also:call for a See also:congress of the allies to consider the See also:common danger . They found a brilliant interpreter in Aeschines, who, after having been a tragic actor and a clerk to the assembly, had entered political life with the advantages of a splendid See also:gift for eloquence, a See also:fine presence, a happy address, a ready wit and a facile See also:conscience . While his opponents had thus suddenly become warlike, Demosthenes had become pacific . He saw that Athens must have time to collect strength . Nothing could be gained, meanwhile, by going on with the war . Macedonian sympathizers at Athens, of whom Philocrates was the See also:chief, also favoured peace . Eleven envoys, including Philocrates, Aeschines, and Demosthenes, were sent to Philip in See also:February 346 B.C . After a debate at Athens, peace was concluded with Philip in See also:April . Philip on the one hand, Athens and her allies on the other, were to keep what they respectively held at the time when the peace was ratified . But here the Athenians made a fatal See also:error . Philip was See also:bent on keeping the See also:door of Greece open . Demosthenes was bent on shutting it against him . Philip was now at war with the See also:people of Halus in Thessaly . Thebes had for ten years been at war with See also:Phocis . Here were two distinct chances for Philip's armed intervention in Greece . But if the Halians and the Phocians were included in the peace, Philip could not See also:bear arms against them without violating the peace . Accordingly Philip insisted that they should not be included . Demosthenes insisted they should be included . They were not included . The result followed speedily . The same envoys were sent a second time to Philip at the end of April 346 for the purpose of receiving his oaths in ratification of the peace . It was late in See also:June before he returned from See also:Thrace to See also:Pella--thus gaining, under the terms, all the towns that he had taken mean-while . He next took the envoys with him through Thessaly to Thermopylae . There—at the invitation of Thessalians and Thebans—he intervened in the Phocian War . Phalaecus surrendered . Phocis was crushed . Philip took its place in the Arnphictyonic Council, and was thus established as a Greek power in the very centre, at the sacred hearth, of Greece . The right of See also:precedence in consultation of the See also:oracle (lrpoµavrela) was transferred from Athens to Philip . While indignant Athenians were clamouring for the revocation of the peace, Demosthenes upheld it in his speech " On the Peace " in See also:September . It ought never to have been made on such terms, he said . But, having been made, it had better be kept . " If we went to war now, where should we find allies ? And after losing See also:Oropus, Amphipolis, Cardia, See also:Chios, See also:Cos, Rhodes, Byzantium, shall we fight about the See also:shadow of See also:Delphi?" During the eight years between the peace of Philocrates and the battle of Chaeronea, the authority of Demosthenes steadily See also:grew, until it became first predominant and then See also:paramount . He had, indeed, a See also:melancholy See also:advantage . Each year his See also:argument was more and more cogently enforced by the See also:logic of facts . In 344 he visited the Peloponnesus for the purpose of counteracting Macedonian intrigue . Mistrust, he told the Peloponnesian cities, is the safeguard of free communities against tyrants . Philip lodged a formal complaint at Athens . Here, as elsewhere, the future master of Greece reminds us of See also:Napoleon on the See also:eve of the first empire . He has the same imperturbable and persuasive effrontery in protesting that he is doing one thing at the moment when his energies are concentrated on doing the opposite . Demosthenes replied in the Second Philippic . " If," he said, " Philip is the friend of Greece, we are doing PhiipPic. wrong . If he is the enemy of Greece, we are doing right . Which is he ? I hold him to be our enemy, because everything that he has hitherto done has benefited himself and hurt us." The See also:prosecution of Aeschines for malversation on the First Philippic . Peace between Philip and Athens . End of Phocian War . embassy (commonly known as De falsa legatione), which was brought to an issue in the following year, marks the moral strength of the position now held by Demosthenes . 
When the gravity of the See also:charge and the complexity of the See also:evidence are considered, the acquittal of Aeschines by a narrow See also:majority must be deemed his condemnation . The speech " On the Affairs of the Chersonese " and the Third Philippic were the crowning efforts of Demosthenes . Spoken in the same year, 341 B.c., and within a See also:short space of each other, they must be taken together . The speech " On the Affairs of the Chersonese " regards the situation chiefly from an Athenian point of view . " If the peace means," argues Demosthenes, " that Philip can seize with impunity one Athenian See also:possession after another, but that Athenians shall not on their peril See also:touch aught that belongs to Philip, where is the See also:line to be See also:drawn ? We shall go to war, I am told, when it is necessary . If the See also:necessity has not come Third yet, when will it come?" The Third Philippic surveys Philippic a wider See also:horizon . It ascends from the Athenian to the Hellenic view . Philip has annihilated Olynthus and the Chalcidic towns . He has ruined Phocis . He has frightened Thebes . He has divided Thessaly . Euboea and the Peloponnesus are his . His power stretches from the Adriatic to the See also:Hellespont . Where shall be the end ? Athens is the last See also:hope of Greece . And, in this final crisis, Demosthenes was the embodied See also:energy of Athens . It was Demosthenes who went to Byzantium, brought the estranged city back to the Athenian alliance, and snatched it from the hands of Philip . It was Demosthenes who, when Philip had already seized Elatea, hurried to Thebes, who by his passionate See also:appeal gained one last See also:chance, the only possible chance, for Greek freedom, who See also:broke down the barrier of an inveterate See also:jealousy, who brought Thebans to fight beside Athenians, and who thus won at the See also:eleventh hour a victory for the spirit of loyal See also:union which took away at least one bitterness from the unspeakable calamity of Chaeronea . But the work of Demosthenes was not closed by the ruin of his cause . During the last sixteen years of his life (s38–322) he rendered services to Athens not less important, and Municipal activity. perhaps more difficult, than those which he- had rendered before . He was now, as a matter of course, foremost in the public affairs of Athens . In See also:January 337, at the See also:annual See also:winter Festival of the Dead in the See also: |