Page:History of Greece Vol XII.djvu/48

 16 HISTORY OF GREP:CE. of the Grecian world, that its cities ha^•e no alternative except to choose between these two foreign potentates — or to invite the help of Darius, the most distant and least dangerous, whose headship could hardly be more than nominal, against a neighbor sure to be domineering and compressive, and likely enough to be tyrannical. Of the once powerful Hellenic chiefs and competi- tors — Sparta, Athens, Thebes — under each of whom the Gre- cian world had been upheld as an independent and self-determin- ing aggregate, admitting the free play of native sentiment and character, under circumstances more or luss advantageous — the two last are now confounded as common units (one even held under garrison) among the subject allies of Alexander ; while Sparta preserves only the dignity of an isolated independence. It appears that during the nine. months which succeeded the swearing of the convention, Alexander and his officers (after his return to Macedonia) were active, both by armed force and by mission of envoys, in procuring new adhesions and in re-model- ling the governments of various cities suitably to their own views. Complaints of such aggressions were raised in the i^ublic assembly of Athens, the only place in Greece where any liberty of discussion still survived. An oration, pronounced by Demos- thenes, Hyperides, or one of the contemporary anti-Macedonian politicians (about the spring or early summer of 335 n. c.,)^ im- parts to us some idea both of the Macedonian interventions steadily going on, and of the unavailing remonstrances raised against them by individual Athenian citizens. At the time of this oration, such remonstrances had already been often repeated. They were always met by the macedonizing Athenians with peremptory declarations that the convention must be observed. ' Tliis is the oration Trepl tuv Trpof 'AP.e'^oi'J/joi' avi-drjKCjv al read v more tlian once alluded to above. Though standing among the Demosthenic works, it is supposed by Libanius as well as by most modern critics not to be the production of Demosthenes — upon internal grounds of style, which are certainly forcible. Libanius says that it bears much resemblance to the style of Hyperides. At any rate, there seems no reason to doubt that it is a genuine oration of one of the contemporary orators. I agree with Bohnecke (Forschungen, p. 629) in thinking that it must have been deliv- ered a few months after the convention with Alexander, before th« taking of Thebes.