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The Orations of Demosthenes
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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 n/a. 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 SummaryIn 348 B. C. the peninsula of Chalcidice with its many flourishing cities fell into Philip’s hands. Two years later he interfered in the affairs of Phocis, a state of central Greece, and gained the place in the Amphictyonic Council which the Phocians had formerly occupied. The Macedonian monarch thus became one of the recognized powers in Greece proper. Demosthenes saw in this success the death knell of Greek independence unless Philip’s further advance was instantly checked. In his Third Philippic (341 B. C.) he reviews the steady growth of the Macedonian power and summons all the cities of Greece to unite in alliance against the invader. Under the eloquent leadership of Demosthenes the war party at Athens at length secured the upper hand. The final struggle could not be long delayed. In 338 B. C. the men of Athens and Thebes, now united in friendly alliance, met their common foe on the field of Chæronea. Philip triumphed. Greece lay helpless and exhausted at the feet of her Macedonian overlord.
Chapter XII Demosthenes and the Struggle Against Philip1
50. The Third Philippic2
That Philip from a mean and humble origin has grown mighty, that the Greeks are jealous and quarreling among themselves, that it was far more wonderful for him to rise from that insignificance, than it would now be, after so many acquisitions, to conquer what is left; these and similar matters, which I might dwell upon, I pass over. But I observe that all people, beginning with you, have conceded to him a right, which in former times has been the subject of contest in every Greek war. And what is this? The right of doing what he pleases, openly fleecing and pillaging the Greeks, one after another, attacking and enslaving their cities. You were at the head of the Greeks for seventy-three1 years, the Spartans for twenty-nine,2 and the Thebans had some power in these latter times after the battle of Leuctra. Yet neither you, my countrymen, nor Spartans nor Thebans, were licensed by the Greeks to act as you pleased; far otherwise. When you, or rather the Athenians of that time, appeared to be dealing harshly with certain people, all the rest, even such as had no complaint against Athens, thought proper to side with the injured parties in a war against her. So, when the Spartans became masters and succeeded to your empire, on their
attempting to encroach and make oppressive innovations, a general war was declared against them, even by such as had no cause of complaint. . . .
Yet all the faults committed by the Spartans in those thirty years and by our ancestors in the seventy are less, men of Athens, than the wrongs which Philip in thirteen incomplete years has inflicted on the Greeks. Nay, they are scarcely a fraction of these, as may easily be shown in a few words. Olynthus1 and Methone1 and Apollonia,1 and thirty-two cities on the borders of Thrace, I pass over. All these he has so cruelly destroyed, that a visitor could hardly tell if they were ever inhabited. Of the Phocians, so considerable a people exterminated,2 I say nothing. But what is the condition of Thessaly? Has he not taken away her constitutions and her cities? . . . . Are not the Eubœan states governed now by despots, and that in an island near to Thebes and Athens? Does he not expressly write in his epistles, "I am at peace with those who are willing to obey me?" Nor does he write so and not act accordingly. He is gone to the Hellespont; he marched formerly against Ambracia; Elis, such an important city in the Peloponnesus, he possesses; he plotted lately to get Megara: neither Greek nor barbarian land contains the man’s ambition.
And we the Greek community, seeing and hearing this, instead of sending embassies to one another about it and expressing indignation, are in such a miserable state, so intrenched in our separate towns, that to this day we can attempt nothing that interest or necessity requires. We cannot combine or form any association for succor and alliance. We look unconcernedly on the man’s growing power, each resolving to enjoy the interval that another is destroyed in, not caring or striving for the salvation of Greece. Yet none can be ignorant that Philip, like some attack of fever or other disease, is coming even on those that yet seem very far removed. And you must be aware that whatever wrong the Greeks sustained from
Spartans or from us, was at least inflicted by genuine people of Greece. . . . In regard to Philip and his conduct they feel not this, for he is no Greek and in no way akin to Greeks. . . . He is, in fact, a vile fellow of Macedonia from which a respectable slave could not be purchased formerly.1
1 , translated by C. R. Kennedy. 5 vols. London, 1876–1878. George Bell and Sons.
2 Demosthenes, Philippics, iii, 27–40.
1 From the conclusion of the Persian invasions to the end of the Peloponnesian War.
2 Reckoning from the battle of Ægospotami, 405 B. C., to the battle of Naxos, 376 B. C.
1 The cities of Chalcidice.
2 In the Second Sacred War.
1 Allowance for oratorical exaggeration must be made here. Philip was a Greek, and no barbarian.
Chicago: C. R. Kennedy, trans., The Orations of Demosthenes in Readings in Early European History, ed. Webster, Hutton (Boston: Ginn and Company, 1926), 130–132. Original Sources, accessed December 4, 2024, http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=NN6AB7UU4VI9NJC.
MLA: . The Orations of Demosthenes, translted by C. R. Kennedy, in Readings in Early European History, edited by Webster, Hutton, Boston, Ginn and Company, 1926, pp. 130–132. Original Sources. 4 Dec. 2024. http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=NN6AB7UU4VI9NJC.
Harvard: (trans.), The Orations of Demosthenes. cited in 1926, Readings in Early European History, ed. , Ginn and Company, Boston, pp.130–132. Original Sources, retrieved 4 December 2024, from http://originalsources.com/Document.aspx?DocID=NN6AB7UU4VI9NJC.
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