Page:History of Greece Vol XII.djvu/322

 290 HISTORY OF GREECE. Demosthenes cannot be sincere in his pretended enmity to Alex- ander, because he has let slip three successive occasions, all highly favorable, for instigating Athens to hostility against tho Macedonians. Of these three occasions, the first was, when Al- exander first crossed into Asia ; the second, immediately before the battle of Issus ; the third, during the flush of success obtained by Agis in Peloponnesus.^ On neither of these occasions did Demosthenes call for any public action against Macedonia ; a nroof (according to -lEschines) that his anti-Macedonian profes- sions were insincere. I have more than once remarked, that considering the bitter enmity between the two orators, it is rarely safe to trust the un- supported allegation of either against the other. But in regard to the last-mentioned charges advanced by ^schincs, there is enough of known fact, and we have independent evidence, such as is not often before us, to appreciate him as an accuser of De- mosthenes. The victorious career of Alexander, set forth in the preceding chapters, proves amply that not one of the three pe- riods, here indicated by ^schines, .presented even decent encour- ao'cment for a reasonable Athenian patriot, to involve his coun- try in warfare against so formidable an enemy. Nothing can be more frivolous than these charges against Demosthenes, of bav- in"- omitted promising seasons for anti-Macedonian operations. Partly for this reason, probably, Demosthenes does not notice them in his reply ; still more, perhaps, on another ground, that it was not safe to speak out what he thought and felt about Alex- ander. His reply dwells altogether upon the period before tho death of Philip. Of the boundless empire subsequently acquired, by the son of Philip, he speaks only to mourn it as a wretched visitation of fortune, which has desolated alike the Hellenic and the barbaric world — in which Athens has been engulfed along with others — and from which even those faithless and trimming Greeks, who helped to aggrandize Philip, have not escaped bet- ter than Athens, nor indeed so well.2 I shall not here touch upon the Demosthenic speech De Cor- ona in a rhetorical point of view, nor add anything to those en« 1 i^scliines adv. Ktesiph. p. 551-553. » Demostlien. Dc Coronft, p. 311-316.