Page:History of Greece Vol XI.djvu/409

 REPLY OF PHILIP. 333 tcrtaining them at the banquet : with others, he had come to an understanding at once more intimate and more corrupt. They brought back a letter from Philip, which was read both in the Senate and the assembly ; while Demosthenes, senator of that year, not only praised them all in the Senate, but also became himself the mover of a resolution that they should be crowned with a wreath of honor, and invited to dine next day in the pry < taneium. 1 We have hardly any means of appreciating the real proceedings of this embassy, or the matters treated in discussion with Philip. ^Eschines tells us nothing, except the formalities of the interview, and the speeches about Amphipolis. But we shall at any rate do him no injustice, if we judge him upon his own account ; which, if it does not represent what he actually did, represents what he wished to be thought to have done. His own account certainly shows a strange misconception of the actual situation of affairs. In order to justify himself for being desirous of peace, he lays considerable stress on the losing game which Athens had been playing during the war, and on the probability of yet farther loss if she persisted. He completes the cheerless picture by adding what was doubtless but too familiar to his Athenian audience that Philip on his side, marching from one success to another, had raised the Macedonian kingdom to an elevation truly formi- dable, by the recent extinction of Olynthus. Yet under this state of comparative force between the two contending parties, ^Eschines presents himself before Philip with a demand of exorbitant mag- nitude, for the cession of Amphipolis. He says not a word about anything else. He delivers an eloquent harangue to convince Philip of the incontestible right of Athens to Amphipolis, and tc 1 ./Eschines, Fals. Leg. p. 34. c. 19 ; Demosth. Fals. Leg. p. 414. This vote of thanks, and invitation to dinner, appears to have been so uniform a custom, that Demosthenes (Fals. Leg. p. 350) comments upon the with- holding of the compliment, when the second embassy returned, as a dis grace without parallel. That Demosthenes should have proposed a motion of such customary formality, is a fact of little moment any way. It rather proves that the relations of Demosthenes with his colleagues during tho embassy, cannot have been so ill-tempered as jEschines had affirmed. Demosthenes himself admits that he did not begin to suspect his colleagues nutil the debates at Athens aftci the return of this first embod