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236 generally; worse than nothing, if it induced the Athenians to fancy that they had carried their point. To correct the delusive fancy, that enough had been done to combat that chronic malady under which the Athenians so readi- ly found encouragement and excuses for inaction to revive in them the conviction, that they had contracted a debt, yet unpaid, towards their Olynthian allies and towards their own ultimate se- curity is the scope of Demosthenes in his third Olynthiao harangue ; third in the printed order, and third also, according to my judgment, in order of time ; delivered towards the close of the year 350 B. c. 1 Like Perikles, he was not less watchful to abate extravagant and unseasonable illusions of triumph in his country- men, than to raise their spirits in moments of undue alarm and despondency. 2 1 Demosth. Olynth. iii. p. 29. , etc. This was the month Msemakte- rion or November 352 B. c. Calculating forward from that date, rpirov erof means the next year but one ; that is the Attic year Olymp. 107. 3, or the year between Midsummer 350 and Midsummer 349 B. c. Dionysius of Halikarnassus says (p. 726) Ko/l/U/za^ot) TOV rpirov //era Qiocakov ap!-av- rof though there was only one archon between Thessalus and Kallima- chus. When Demosthenes says rplrov TJ riraprov erof it is clear that both cannot be accurate ; we must choose one or the other ; and rpirov ire; brings us to the year 350-349 B. c. To show that the oration was probably spoken during the first half of that year, or before February 349 B. c., another point of evidence may be no ticcd. At the time when the third Olynthiac was spoken, no expedition of Athe- nian citizens had yet been sent to the help of Olynthus. But we shall see, presently, that Athenian citizens were sent thither during the first half of 349 B. C. Indeed, it would be singular, if the Olynthiace had been spoken after the expedition to Euboca, that Demosthenes should make no allusion in any one of them to that expedition, an affair of so much moment and interest, which kept Athens in serious agitation during much of the year, and was followed by prolonged war in that neighboring island. In the third Olynthiac, De- mosthenes alludes to taking arms against Corinth and Megara (p. 34). Would he be likely to leave the far more important proceedings in Euboea unnoticed "? Would he say nothing about the grave crisis in which the de- cree of Apollodorus was proposed ? This difficulty disappears when we re. oognize the Olynthiacs as anterior tc the Euboic war 1 Tlmcyl ii 65 "Ojrore yovv al ri avroi)^ vapu Kaipbv v^pei tiap