Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 1.djvu/279

 ÆSCHINES collecting contributions from the Greeks; but when, contrary to expectation, the public dangers seemed to vanish, he again returned. At first he appeared a timorous and dejected creature: he rose in the assembly, scarcely half alive, and desired to be appointed a commissioner for settling and establishing the treaty, but during the first progress of these transactions you did not even allow the name of Demosthenes to be subscribed to your decrees, but appointed Nausicles your principal agent; yet now he has the presumption to demand a crown. When Philip died and Alexander succeeded to the kingdom, then did he once more practise his impostures. He raised altars to Pausanias, and loaded the senate with the odium of offering sacrifices and public thanksgivings on this occasion. He called Alexander a margites, and had the presumption to assert that he would never stir from Macedon: for that he would be satisfied with parading through his capital, and there tearing up his victims in search of happy omens. "And this," said he, "I declare, not from conjecture, but from a clear conviction of this great truth, that glory is not to be purchased but by blood"; the wretch! whose veins have no blood; who judged of Alexander, not from the temper of Alexander, but from his own dastardly soul.

But when the Thessalians had taken up arms against us, and the young prince at first expressed the warmest resentment, and not without reason—when an army had actually infested