Page:The Children's Plutarch, Greeks.djvu/135

 at night, by the glimmer of an oil lamp, writing out and repeating what he meant to say at the meeting; and a man who was jealous of him once sneered:

"Demosthenes, your speeches smell of the lamp!"

In the days of Demosthenes a danger hung over the lovely land of Greece. The danger was in the north, in the kingdom of Macedonia (Mas-se-do-nia), which was ruled by King Philip. Bold and strong were the soldiers of Philip, and especially to be feared was their manner of fighting in the phalanx (fal-anks). In a phalanx the men formed sixteen ranks, and each held a lance eighteen feet long, pointing it toward the enemy, so that the sixteen rows of warriors, with their great lances, made a dreadful wall for footmen or horsemen to dash against.

Now, it was in the heart of Philip to conquer all the States of Greece—Sparta, Athens, and the rest; and the Greeks were not so willing to fight for their land as their fathers had been. They rather wanted other men to fight for them in return for wages; but these paid armies would not fight so bravely as men who, out of love for their country or city, took up arms and went forth to war. When the troops of King Philip took various towns on the borders of Greece, and were little by little approaching nearer to Athens,