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DEM common enemy. But the Peloponnesians, wholly absorbed in their miserable rivalries, were immovable. Overtures for peace were set on foot, and an embassy was sent out to arrange the basis of an agreement. We have to rely on the authority of Æschines for our information regarding this embassy, which met Philip at Pella early in 346. According to his account he himself played the foremost part in the negotiations, while his fellow-ambassador Demosthenes, overtaken by an unwonted confusion in presence of the king, broke down in the midst of an oration which he had elaborately prepared. Philip, after some discussion, offered to conclude a peace on the terms of "Uti possidetis." The proceedings at Athens on the return of the envoys are involved in confusion. Amid the contradictory reports that have come down to us, we can only guess at the main facts; two assemblies were held, in which several of the allies of Athens were present; a motion of Philocrates to conclude an alliance between Philip and his allies on one side, Athens and her allies on the other, was carried. No representative of the Phocians was present, and the ambassadors of Philip protested against their being included. Demosthenes shared in the general mistake, and did not at the time protest against their exclusion. The oaths of conformity to the treaty were administered at once in Athens, but they had to be taken by the king; and Demosthenes was again appointed, along with Æschines, to serve in this mission. The ambassadors delayed in starting, loitered on their march, and reached Philip at Pella fifty days after they had set out, when he had completed the conquest of Thrace, and reduced another ally of Athens. Even then they delayed administering the oath for twenty days longer, when he had reached Pheræ, and threatened Thermopylæ. This course adhered to in spite of the incessant remonstrances of Demosthenes, suggests treachery on the part of the other envoys, and the further conduct of Philocrates and Æschines confirms the suspicion. They agreed at Pheræ to exclude the Phocians from all benefit of the treaty. They asserted at Athens, that Philip had occupied Thermopylae to assist the Phocians against Thebes, and succeeded in deceiving the people till news arrived that he had passed the straits unchallenged, formed an alliance with Thebes, received the surrender of all the Phocian towns, and terminated the sacred war. This coup d'état filled Athens with dismay, and preparations were made to put the city in a posture of defence; but presently a conciliatory letter arrived from Philip, who was not yet prepared for the final stroke. The Athenians were obliged to accept with a good grace an offer of friendship which they dared neither trust nor reject. At this moment the king's power in the north of Greece was overwhelming. The Thebans, Thessalians, Argeians, Messenians, and Arcadians, deceived by his promises, and jealous of their Greek rivals, were ready to bestow on him the Amphictyonic suffrage, which gave him a legal right to interfere in their affairs. When his envoys arrived to solicit the concurrence of Athens in this vote, Demosthenes did not think it prudent to oppose the demand. He had resisted every step, but one, of that fatal policy which had brought matters into a position in which further resistance would have been folly. The anger of the Athenians expending itself in the condemnation of Philocrates, the immediate author of the peace, Æschines escaped in spite of the attempt of Demosthenes, 343 ., in his oration, , to show his Complicity in the whole fraud The treaty thus concluded, 346 ., lasted formally till 340 .; but the intervening period was one of smouldering war—of aggressions on the one side; remonstrances, embassies, and defensive preparations on the other. Philip was stealthily advancing, detaching one by one the limbs of Greece, before he ventured to aim a blow at her heart. His paramount object was to prevent the formation of a Greek confederacy and thwart that united action of the states, which was the turning point of all the exhortations of the orator. Those two great men at this period completely represent the opposite forces of history; the one acts; the other tries to react. Every move of Philip is met by a counter move of his adversary. When the former sends his despatches to foment discord in the Peloponnesus, the latter sets on foot an embassy to organize a league, or arrange a congress. The one accuses; the other defends. In his second Philippic delivered about the end of 344 ., Demosthenes renewed his old watchwords with an energy, which called forth a letter from the king charging the orator with calumny. Meanwhile, he had strengthened his navy, and was steadily extending his power along the north of the Ægean. His capture of Halonnesus at one time threatened to bring matters to an issue; but the dispute, after calling forth another speech from Demosthenes, ended in mutual reprisals. An attack on the Chersonese alarmed the Athenians as to the safety of their own supplies, which came for the most part from that region, and led to the oration— and a third Philippic, urging an immediate declaration of war. It was through the influence of the orator which gradually gained ground at this period, that an expedition was sent to Eubœa; and the tyrants established through Macedonian influence in some of the cities were deposed. Despatched in the spring of 340 as envoy to Byzantium, which was threatened by the enemy, he succeeded in bringing it into alliance with Athens; and when shortly afterwards Philip attacked Perinthus, hostilities were openly renewed on both sides. The Athenian army under Phocion relieved the siege of that town and of Byzantium, so that Philip met with a decided check, and was driven to conclude a peace, the whole credit of which was given by the inhabitants, as it was due, to the exhortations and energies of Demosthenes. In the same year he succeeded in persuading the people to apply the whole of the theoric fund to military purposes, and passed his law reforming the trierarchy. The next stage of the history begins with a new complexity. Philip, employed in wars with his northern neighbours, had left his emissaries to work for him in Greece. At a meeting of the Amphictyones held in the spring of 340. at Delphi, Æschines, in the capacity of Pylagoras, got a decree passed to expel the Locrians of Amphissa from certain lands said to be sacred to the god. Their resistance led to a war, which resulted in the appointment of Philip as leader of the Amphictyonic forces. Demosthenes, at every stage of this calamitous affair, foretold the ruin in which it was sure to end, but his words, like those of Cassandra, were doomed to be at once prophetic and fruitless. Philip had got the pretext for intervention which he so much desired, and again passing the straits of Thermopylæ, and turning aside from his march towards Delphi, threw off the mask and seized upon the stronghold of Elatea. When the tidings of this unexpected event reached Athens, the agora was filled with tumult and confusion. Only Demosthenes, who had foreseen the danger, ventured to suggest the means yet remaining to avert it. His advice determined the Athenians to forget their old hostilities, and form an alliance with Thebes; his conduct as ambassador to that city carried the design into execution; and, from this time till the end of the war, he directed all the councils of the allies. In two minor engagements they were successful; their hopes revived. Philip again held out proposals of peace; but Demosthenes, judging rightly that the enemy could only gain by delay, urged on an engagement. The fatal result of Chæronea which, 338 ., decided the struggle, was owing more to the want of consummate generalship on the side of the Greeks, than their inferiority in numbers. They were at least overmastered by open force; it was better to fall before the Macedonian phalanx and Alexander's cavalry, than be tricked out of independence by the wiles of diplomacy. What statesmanship could do for liberty had been done by Demosthenes; and Philip is said to have expressed his wonder at the one man, who forced him to risk his whole fortune on the event of one day. The orator himself was engaged in the battle, and was not the last of the fugitives. He lost his shield and ran—a fact which was most unfairly made a handle against him by his enemies. "Cedunt arma togæ" is no more true in the forum than its converse on the field. The Athenians could hardly have thought that Demosthenes had disgraced himself, for they appointed him to pronounce the funeral oration over those who had fallen fighting, and acted under his direction in preparing so vigorously for a defence, that Philip, who had treated the Thebans with great severity, sent proposals to Athens too liberal to be refused. Peace was concluded, and she retained under his patronage a shadow of her old independence.

III. During the two years succeeding this disaster Demosthenes remained at Athens, exposed to the aspersions of his personal and political opponents. Fortunately, he was enabled to refute their vexatious charges, but on Ctesiphon proposing to present him with a crown in token of the admiration and respect of his countrymen, his motion was assailed by Æschines on the ground of illegality, and the settlement of the question was delayed for some years. Meanwhile, in 366 ., tidings of