Page:History of Greece Vol XII.djvu/360

 J528 HISTORY OF GREECE that the poison which he had provided beforehand presei'ved hira from the sword of Antipater, and perhaps from having his tongue cut out. The most remarkable assertion was that of Demo- chares, nephew of Demosthenes, made in his harangues at Athens a few years afterwards. Demochares asserted that his uncle had not taken poison, but had been softly withdrawn from the world by a special providence of the gods, just at the moment essential to rescue him from the cruelty of the Macedonians. It is not less to be noted, as an illustration of the vein of sentiment afterwards prevalent, that Archias the Exile-Hunter was affirm- ed to have perished in the utmost dishonor and wretchedness.^ The violent deaths of these illustrious orators, the disfrancliise- ment and deportation of the Athenian Demos, the suppression of the public Dikasteries, the occupation of Athens by a Macedonian garrison, and of Greece generally by Macedonian Exile-Hunters — are events belonging to one and the same calamitous tragedy, and marking the extinction of the autonomous hellenic world. Of Hyperides as a citizen we know only the general fact, that he maintained from first to last, and with oratorical ability inferior only to Demosthenes, a strenuous opposition to Macedonian do- minion over Greece ; though his prosecution of Demosthenes respecting the Harpalian treasure appears (as far as it comes be- fore us) discreditable. Of Demosthenes we know more — enough to form a judgment of him both as citizen and statesman. At the time of his death he was about sixty-two years of age, and we have before us his first Philippic, delivered thirty years before (352-351 b. c). We are thus sure, that even at that early day, he took a sagacious and provident measure of the dan- ger which threatened Grecian liberty from the energy and en- croachments of Philip. He impressed upon his countrymen this coming danger, at a time when the older and more influential politicians either could not or would not see it ; he called aloud upon his fellow-citizens for personal service and pecuniary con- tributions, enforcing the call by all the artifices of consummate oratory, when such distateful propositions only entailed unpopu< 1 Plutarcli, Demosth. 30; Plutarch, Vit. X. Orat. p. 846 ; Tliotius, p. 494 Anian, Dc Reims post Alexand. vi. ap. rhotium, Cod. 92.