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The
Peace,

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the speech by which he gained his cause against Timotheus the general in an action of debt, and also those against Phormion and Stephanus, and in this latter case was with some reason thought to have acted dishonourably, for the speech which Phormion used against Apollodorus was also of his making; he, as it were, having simply furnished two adversaries out of the same shop with weapons to wound one another. Of his public orations that against Androtion and those against Timocrates and Aristocrates were written for others, before he had come forward himself as a politician; they seem to have been composed when he was twenty-seven or twenty-eight years old. That against Aristogiton and that for the Immunities he spoke himself, at the request, as he says, of Ctesippus the son of Chabrias, but, as some say, out of courtship to the young man's mother; though in fact he did not marry her, for his wife was a woman of Samos, as Demetrius the Magnesian writes in his book on Persons of the same Name. It is not certain whether his oration against Eschines for Misconduct as Ambassador was ever spoken; although Idomeneus says that Æschines wanted only thirty voices to condemn him. But this seems not to have been the fact, if we may judge by their own language in their orations on the Crown; in which neither of them speaks clearly or directly of the cause having actually come to trial. Let others decide this controversy.

It was never a question what course he would take in politics; even during the peace he let nothing that B.C. 346. was done by the Macedonian pass without comment and censure, and upon all occasions kept stirring up the people

of Athens and kindling them against him. And so in the court of Philip no man was so much talked of or of such great account as he; and when he went, as one of the ten ambassadors who were sent into Macedonia, though all were listened to, yet his speech was answered by the king with most care and exactness. Not that in other respects Philip treated him as honourably as the rest, or showed to him the same favour as he did to Eschines and Philocrates. And so when they came home and extolled Philip for his eloquence, his beautiful person, nay, and also for his plenteous drinking, Demosthenes could not but cavil at their selection, saying one was the praise of a rhetorician, the second that of a woman, and the last the merit of a sponge; no one of them the proper commendation of a prince.

tion to

B.C. 341,

But when things tended at last to war, Philip on 17 the one side being not able to live in peace, and the Expedi Athenians on the other side being stirred up by De- Euboea, mosthenes, the first action he put them upon was an 340. expedition to Euboea, which by the treachery of the tyrants had become subject to Philip: and on his proposition the decree was voted, and they crossed over and drove the Macedonians out of the island. The Relief of Bynext was the relief of the Byzantines and Perinthians, zantium who were attacked by the Macedonians. He persuaded rinthus, the people to lay aside their enmity against these cities, B.C. 339. to forget the offences committed by either of them in the Social War, and to send them such succours as eventually saved and secured them. Next after, he went on an embassy through the states of Greece, which he solicited and so far incensed against Philip, that, a few only excepted, he brought them all into

and Pe

at

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B.C. 339.

a general league to resist him. So that besides the forces composed of the citizens themselves there was an army consisting of fifteen thousand foot and two thousand horse, and the money to pay these mercenaries was levied and brought in with great cheerfulness. On which occasion it was, says Theophrastus, on the allies requesting that their contributions for the war might be ascertained and stated, Crobylus, the popular speaker, told them, War couldn't be boarded at so much a day. Now was all Greece up in arms, and in great expectation. The Euboeans, Achæans, Corinthians, Megarians, Leucadians, and Corcyræans, their people and their cities, were all in the league. But the hardest task was yet behind, left for Demosthenes, to draw the Thebans into this confederacy with the rest. Their country bordered next upon Attica, they had great forces for the war, and at that time were accounted the best soldiers of all Greece; and it was no easy matter to make them break with Philip, who had so recently laid them under obligations to him in the Phocian war; more especially as the subjects of dispute and variance between Athens and Thebes were so continually renewed and exasperated by petty quarrels arising out of the proximity of their frontiers.

But when Philip, encouraged by his good success at Philip Amphissa, suddenly seized Elatea and possessed himElatea, self of Phocis, and the Athenians were in consternation, perhaps October and none durst venture to rise up to speak, no one knew what to say, all were at a loss, and the whole assembly in silence and perplexity, in this extremity of affairs Demosthenes was the only man who appeared, his counsel to them being alliance with the Thebans.

And having in other ways encouraged the people, and, as his manner was, raised their spirits up with hopes, he with some others was sent ambassador to Thebes : whither Philip also sent envoys to oppose him, two Macedonians, says Marsyas, Amyntas and Clearchus, and Daochus a Thessalian, and Thrasydæus. The Thebans did not fail to see what course was most for their good, but every one had before his eyes the terrors of war, their losses in the Phocian troubles being still fresh in recollection. Such, however, was the force and power of the orator, fanning up, as Theopompus says, their courage and firing their emulation, that everything else was obscured, and casting away prudence, fear, and obligation, in a sort of divine possession they chose the path of honour, to which his words invited them. And this success, thus accomplished by an orator, was thought to be so glorious and of such consequence, that Philip immediately sent heralds to treat and petition for a peace; Greece was all aroused, and up in arms to help; the commanders of the forces, even those of the Boeotians, put themselves under the direction of Demosthenes and observed his orders; he managed all the assemblies of the Thebans, no less than those of the Athenians; he was beloved both by the one and by the other, and exercised the same supreme authority with both; and that not by unfair means, or without just cause, as Theopompus professes, but indeed it was no more than was due to his merit.

Battle

But there was, it should seem, some divinely-ordered 19 fortune, commissioned in the revolution of things to put of Cha a period at this time to the liberty of Greece, which one, opposed and thwarted their actions, and foreshowed August.

A A

B.C. 338.

also by many signs what was about to happen. The Pythian priestess uttered predictions of evil; and this old oracle was repeated out of the Sibyls' verses,

The battle on Thermodon that shall be
Safe at a distance I desire to see,
Far, like an eagle, watching in the air,

Conquered shall weep, and conqueror perish there.

Thermodon, they say, is a little rivulet here in our country in Cheronea, running into the Cephisus.

But

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we know of none so called at the present time; and can only conjecture that the streamlet now called Hæmon, which runs by the sanctuary of Hercules, where the Greeks were encamped, might perhaps in those days be called Thermodon, and after the fight, being filled with blood and dead bodies, upon this occasion, as we guess, might change its old name for that which it now bears.

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