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Rh suspicious towards him, and even, in fact, disregarding the spirit of the peace recently concluded. The envoys from Argos and Messene might fairly complain of the seeming connection between Athens and Sparta, and argue that it was a menace to the liberties of the Peloponnese. It was a great and critical occasion, and called for able statesmanship. It was an opportunity to raise yet higher the character of Demosthenes as a public adviser, and he availed himself of it. In the speech which he delivered in B.C. 344, known as the second Philippic, he spoke out in the plainest language both against Philip's insinuations and against the ill-timed complaints of the Peloponnesian envoys. He vindicated at the same time his own policy, and denounced the Philippising faction, in which his rival Æschines was now a conspicuous figure.

Philip, he declares, was the great aggressor of the age; he was a plotter against the whole of Greece. He repeats what he had said as ambassador to the people of Messene by way of warning from the past:—

"Ye men of Messene, how do you think the Olynthians would have looked to hear anything against Philip at those times when he surrendered to them Anthemus, which all former kings of Macedonia claimed, when he cast out the Athenian colonists and gave them Potidæa, thereby incurring your enmity, and giving them the land to enjoy? Think you that they expected such treatment as they got, or would they have believed it if they had been told? Nevertheless, after enjoying for a brief space the possessions of others, they are for