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General SummaryGREEK history, during the half-century following the close of the Peloponnesian War, is a confused and tedious record of the efforts of the leading cities, Sparta, Thebes, Athens, and Corinth, to preserve or to recover a supremacy over their neighbors. In these endless struggles the Greek states wore themselves out. Torn by internal faction and distracted by local jealousies, they were to fall an easy victim to the ambitious designs of Philip of Macedonia. We cannot think of Philip without thinking also of his great antagonist, the Athenian orator Demosthenes. To the task of maintaining the power and independence of Athens against Macedonia, Demosthenes devoted all his splendid talents and, in the end, his life itself. As the crafty Macedonian king gradually extended his power along the coast of Thrace and the peninsula of Chalcidice, Demosthenes saw with ever growing clearness how great a danger threatened the disunited cities of Greece. In several famous speeches (Philippics), delivered during the period 351–341 B. C., he exhausted all the resources of the orator’s art in the endeavor to awaken his countrymen to their peril.
Historical SummaryTwo years after the fateful day of Chæronea, on the motion of a certain Ctesiphon, a decree was passed by the Athenian Council that Demosthenes should receive a civic crown of gold and ivory in grateful recognition of his services to the state. This action was opposed as illegal by Æschines, himself a powerful orator, and long a political opponent of Demosthenes. For various reasons the trial was postponed until 330 B. C. Then all Athens gathered to the Assembly to hear the debate between the rival orators. The speech of Æschines, though nominally directed against Ctesiphon, was really a virulent attack upon Demosthenes and his entire public career. In reply, Demosthenes delivered his oration, On the Crown, a magnificent defense of his past policy and the greatest oratorical effort of antiquity. Athens was not false to her glorious past. Demosthenes won his case and received the coveted reward. Æschines, completely discredited, went into voluntary exile. The great orator was to enjoy one more signal triumph before his melancholy end. When tidings of Alexander’s death reached Athens, that city, aided by many other states of Greece, broke out in sudden revolt against Macedonia (323 B.C.). At this time Demosthenes was himself in exile, under condemnation on a charge of bribery. Now, however, the Athenians recalled him, as in earlier days they had recalled Alcibiades, and paid out of the public treasury the fine of fifty talents which had been assessed upon him. Demosthenes once more became the center of Athenian resistance to Macedonia. But the revolt was soon suppressed. Antipater, the Macedonian general, demanded, as the price of peace, the surrender of Demosthenes and his fellow orators who had fanned the flame of insurrection. "They dispersed themselves, flying, some to one place, some to another; and Antipater sent about his soldiers into all quarters to apprehend them. Archias was their captain, and was thence called the exile-hunter. . . . Demosthenes, he heard, had taken sanctuary at the Temple of Poseidon in Calauria. Crossing over thither in some light vessels, as soon as he had landed himself, and the Thracian spearmen that came with him, Archias endeavored to persuade Demosthenes to accompany him to Antipater, as if he should meet with no hard usage from him. But Demosthenes, in his sleep the night before, had a strange dream. It seemed to him that he was acting a tragedy, and contended with Archias for the victory; and though he acquitted himself well, and gave good satisfaction to the spectators, yet for want of better furniture and settings for the stage, he lost the day. And so, while Archias was speaking to him with many expressions of kindness, he sat still in the same posture, looking steadfastly upon him. ’O Archias,’ said he, ’I am as little affected by your promises now as I used formerly to be by your acting.’ Archias then began to grow angry and to threaten him. ’Now,’ said Demosthenes, ’you speak like the genuine Macedonian oracle; before you were but acting a part. Therefore forbear only a little, while I write a word home to my family.’ Having thus spoken, he withdrew into the temple and taking a scroll, as if he meant to write, he put the reed into his mouth, and biting it, as he was wont to do when he was thoughtful or writing, he held it there for some time. Then he bowed down his head and covered it. The soldiers that stood at the door, supposing all this to proceed from want of courage and fear of death, in derision called him effeminate, and faint-hearted, and coward. And Archias, drawing near, desired him to rise up, and repeating the same kind things he had spoken before, he once more promised him to make his peace with Antipater. But Demosthenes, perceiving that now the poison had begun to operate, uncovered his head, and said to Archias, ’As soon as you please, you may commence the part of Creon in the tragedy, and cast out this body of mine unburied. But, O gracious Poseidon, I, for my part, while I am yet alive, rise up and depart out of this sacred place; though Antipater and the Macedonians have not left so much as thy temple unpolluted.’ After he had thus spoken he desired to be held up because already he had begun to tremble and stagger. As he was going forward and passing by the altar, he fell down, and with a groan gave up the ghost. . . . Soon after his death, the people of Athens bestowed on him such honors as he had deserved. They erected his statue of bronze; they decreed that the eldest of his family should be maintained in the Prytaneum. On the base of his statue was engraven the famous inscription,
51. Oration on the Crown2
The past is with all the world given up; no one even proposes to deliberate about it: the future it is, or the present, which
demands the action of a counselor. At the time, as it appeared, there were dangers impending, and dangers at hand. Mark the line of my policy at that crisis; don’t rail at the event. The end of all things is what the Deity pleases: his line of policy it is that shows the judgment of the statesman. Do not then impute it as a crime to me that Philip chanced to conquer in battle. That issue depended not on me, but on God. Prove that I did not adopt all measures that according to human calculation were feasible; that I did not honestly and diligently and with exertions beyond my strength carry them out; or that my enterprises were not honorable and worthy of the state and necessary. Show me this, and accuse me as soon as you like.
But if the hurricane that visited us has been too powerful, not for us only, but for all Greece besides, what is the fair course? As if a merchant, after taking every precaution, and furnishing his vessel with everything that he thought would insure her safety, because subsequently he met with a storm and his tackle was strained or broken to pieces, should be charged with the shipwreck! "Well, but I was not the pilot" — he might say — just as I was not the general. "Fortune was not under my control: all was under hers."
Consider and reflect upon this. If, with the Thebans on our side, we were destined so to fare in the contest, what was to be expected, if we had never had them for allies, but they had joined Philip, as he used every effort of persuasion to make them do? And if, when the battle1 was fought three days’ march from Attica, such peril and alarm surrounded the city, what must we have expected, if the same disaster had happened in some part of our territory? . . .
All this, at such length, have I addressed to you, men of the jury, and to the outer circle of hearers; for, as to this contemptible fellow, a short and plain argument would suffice. If the future was revealed to you, Æschines, alone, when the state was deliberating on these proceedings, you ought to have forewarned us at the time. If you did not foresee it, you are
responsible for the same ignorance as the rest. Why then do you accuse me in this behalf, rather than I you? A better citizen have I been than you in respect to the matters of which I am speaking, inasmuch as I gave myself up to what seemed for the general good, not shrinking from any personal danger, or taking thought of any. You, on the contrary, neither suggested better measures (or mine would not have been adopted), nor lent any aid in the prosecuting of mine. Exactly what the basest person and worst enemy of the state would do, are you found to have done after the event. . . . Surely, the man who waited to found his reputation upon the misfortunes of the Greeks deserves rather to perish than to accuse another. . . .
But since he insists so strongly on the event, I will even assert something of a paradox: and I beg and pray of you not to marvel at its boldness, but kindly to consider what I say. If then the results had been foreknown to all, if all had foreseen them . . . not even then should the commonwealth have abandoned her design, if she had any regard for glory, or ancestry, or futurity. . . . For in former times our country has never preferred an ignominious security to the battle for honor. What Greek or what barbarian is ignorant that, by the Thebans, or by the Spartans who were in power before them, or by the Persian king, permission would thankfully and gladly have been given to our commonwealth, to take what she pleased and hold her own, provided she would accept foreign law and let a foreign state command in Greece? But, to the Athenians of that day, such conduct would not have been endurable. None could at any period of time persuade the commonwealth to attach herself in secure subjection to the powerful and unjust. Through every age has she persevered in a perilous struggle for precedency and honor and glory. . . . Never, never can you have done wrong, O Athenians, in undertaking the battle for the freedom and safety of all! I swear it by your forefathers — those that met the peril at Marathon, those that took the field at Platæa, those in the sea fight at Salamis, and those at Artemisium, and many other brave men who repose in the
public monuments, all of whom alike, as being worthy of the same honor, the country buried, not only the successful or victorious! Justly! For the duty of brave men has been done by all: their fortune has been such as the Deity assigned to each.
"Had you for Greece been strong, as wise you were,
The Macedonian had not conquered her."2
2 Demosthenes, , 192–208.
1 Chæronea.
1 See page 106.
2 An island off the southeastern coast of Argolis.
1 The public hearth and common table established by the city of Athens.
2 Plutarch, Demosthenes, 28–30.
Chicago: On the Crown in Readings in Early European History, ed. Webster, Hutton (Boston: Ginn and Company, 1926), 136–135. Original Sources, accessed December 4, 2024, http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=2IXLAWEULM252Z6.
MLA: . On the Crown, in Readings in Early European History, edited by Webster, Hutton, Boston, Ginn and Company, 1926, pp. 136–135. Original Sources. 4 Dec. 2024. http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=2IXLAWEULM252Z6.
Harvard: , On the Crown. cited in 1926, Readings in Early European History, ed. , Ginn and Company, Boston, pp.136–135. Original Sources, retrieved 4 December 2024, from http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=2IXLAWEULM252Z6.
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