Page:History of Greece Vol XII.djvu/49

 ni.'EACHES OF THE CONVENTION AT SEA. 17 But ill reply, the remonstrants urged, that it was unfair to call upon Athens for strict observance of the convention, while the Macedonians and their partisans in the various cities were per- petually violating it for their own profit. Alexander and his otficers (affirms this orator) had never once laid down their arms since the convention was settled. They had been perpetually tampering with the governments of the various cities, to promote Iheir own partisans to power.^ In Messene, Sikyon, and Pel- lene, they had subverted the popular constitutions, banished many citizens, and established friends of their own as despots. The Macedonian force, destined as a public guarantee to enforce the observance of the convention, had been employed only to overrule its best conditions, and to arm the hands of factious partisans.^ Thus Alexander in his capacity of Imperator, disre- garding all the restraints of the convention, acted as chief despot for the maintenance of subordinate despots in the separate cities.^ Even at Athens, this imperial authority had rescinded sentences of the dikastery, and compelled the adoption of measures contrar)' .0 the laws and constitution.'* At sea, the wrongful aggressions of Alexander or his officers had been not less manifest than on land. The convention, guar- anteeing to all cities the right of free navigation, distinctly forbade each to take or detain vessels belonging to any other. Never- theless the Macedonians had seized, in the Hellespont, all the merchantmen coming out with cargoes from the Euxine, and ' Demosthenes (or Pseudo-Demosth.), Orat. De Fcedere Alex. p. 216. OvTU fisv Toivvv fjadlcjc 5"" oT/la ETr^veyKS u MaKeSdv, cJare ov3e KaTi-&eTo •KUTTOTE, ukV ETL Kol vvv TTEpiepxETai «ai?' vcTov SuvaTai, etc. ^ Demosth. ib. p. 214, 215. ^ Demosth. (or Pseudo-Demcstli.) Orat. De Foedere Alex. p. 212,214 215, 220, where the orator speaks of Alexander as the rvpavvo( of Greece. The orator argues (p. 213) that the Macedonians had recognized despot- ism as contrary to the convention, in so far as to expel the despots from the towns of Antissa and Eresus in Lesbos. But probably these despots were in correspondence with the Persians on the opposite mainland, or wivli Memnon. fj'ev KEKpifiivovc EV TOL^ 6iKaaT7]pioic uiiiTEc, trepa iSi 7Taft7r?J/dri Toiavra Sta^o/iEvoi Kapavo/xEii' 5*
 * Demosth. ib. p. 215. roi'f d' i'J/ouf vfiLg vof-ovg uva-KuL,ovaL /.velv, tov(