Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/82

Rh been virtually subject to Mausolus, prince ([Greek]) of Caria, himself a tributary of Persia. Mausolus died in, and was succeeded by his widow Artemisia. The democratic party in Rhodes now appealed to Athens for help in throwing off the Carian yoke. Demosthenes supported their application. No act of his life was a truer 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.

an Athenian force under Phocion was sent to Euboea, in support of Plutarchus, tyrant of Eretria, against the faction of Olitarchus. Demosthenes protested against spending strength, needed for greater objects, on the local quarrels of a despot. Phocion won a victory at Tamynse. But the &quot; inglorious and costly war &quot; entailed an outlay of more than £12,000 on the ransom of captives alone, and ended in the total destruction of Athenian influence throughout Euboea. That island was now left an open field lor the intrigues of Philip. Worst of all, the party of Eubulus not only defeated a proposal, arising from this campaign, for applying the festival-money to the war-fund, but actually carried a law making it high treason to renew the proposal. The amusement of the citizens was thus officially declared to be more important than the protection of their properties or lives, and the expression of a different opinion was henceforth to be a crime. The degree to which political enmity was exasperated by the Eubœan war may be judged from the incident of Midias, an adherent of Eubulus, and a type of that opulent rowdyism which shows how curiously loose the hold of the state had now become on men who were not restrained by regard for their purses or their characters. Demosthenes was choragus of his tribe, and was wearing the robe of that sacred office at the great festival in the theatre of Dionysus, when Midias struck him on the face. The affair was eventually compromised. The speech written by Demosthenes for the trial was neither spoken nor completed, and remains, as few will regret, a sketch.

It was now three years since, in, the Olynthians had sent an embassy to Athens, and had made peace with their only sure ally. In a second Olynthian embassy had sought and obtained Athenian help, The hour of Olynthus had indeed come. In Philip opened war against the Chalcidic towns of the Olynthian League. The First and Second Olynthiacs of Demosthenes were spoken in that year. &quot; Better now than later,&quot; is the thought of the First Olynthiac. &quot; The fight must come. Better that it should be fought in Macedonia than in Attica. Everything favours us now. Send one force to defend Olynthus, and another to attack Philip.&quot; The Second Olynthiac argues that Philip s strength is overrated. &quot; He is weak in so far as he is selfish and unjust. He is strong only because he is energetic. Let us be energetic too, and our just cause will prevail. &quot; The Third Olynthiac spoken in  carries us into the midst of action. It deals with practical details. The festival-fund must be used for the war. The citizens must serve in person. A few months later, Olynthus and the thirty-two towns of the Confederacy were swept from the 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 privilege of political vagueness, now began to call for a congress of the allies to consider the common danger. They found a brilliant interpreter in ^Eschines, who, after having been a tragic actor and a clerk to the assembly, had entered political life with the advantages of a splendid gift for eloquence, a fine presence, a happy address, a ready wit, and a facile 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 chief, also favoured peace. Eleven envoys, including Philocrates, /Eschines, and Demosthenes, were sent to Philip in February, After a debate at Athens, peace was concluded with Philip in 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 error. Philip was bent on keeping the door of Greece open. Demosthenes was bent on shutting it against him. Philip was now at war with the people of Halus in Thessaly. Thebes had for ten years been at war with Phocis. Here were two distinct chances for Philip s armed intervention in Greece. But if the Haliaus and the Phocians were included in the peace, Philip could not bear arms against them without violating the peace. Accordingly Philip in sisted that they should not be included. Demosthenes insisted that they should be included. They were not included. The result followed speedily. The same envoys were sent a second time to Philip for the purpose of receiving his oaths in ratification of the peace. It was late in June before he returned from Thrace to Pella thus gaining, under the terms, all the towns that he had taken meanwhile. 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. Phalsecus surrendered. Phocis was crushed. Philip took its place in the Amphictyonic Council, and was thus established as a Greek power in the very centre, at the sacred hearth, of Greece. The right of precedence in con sultation of the oracle (Tr/jo/xavret a) was transferred from Athens to Philip. While indignant Athenians were clamouring for the revocation of the peace, Demosthenes upheld it. It ought never to have been made on such terms, he said. But, having been made, it had better be kept. &quot; If we went to war now, where should we find allies? And after losing Oropus, Amphipolis, Cardia, Chios, Cos, Rhodes, Byzantium, shall we fight about the shadow of Delphi?&rdquo; During the eight years between the peace of Philocrates and the battle of Chæronea, the authority of Demosthenes steadily grew, until it became first predominant and then paramount. He had, indeed, a melancholy advantage. Each year his argument was more and more cogently enforced by the logic of facts. In 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 Napoleon on the 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 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 prosecution of Æschines for malversation on the embassy, 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 charge and the complexity of the evidence are considered, the acquittal of Æschines by a narrow majority 