The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1

by Demosthenes

INTRODUCTION i. 7

LIST OF SPEECHES TRANSLATED

Traditional Order In this Edition
ORATION I. OLYNTHIAC I i. 87
II. OLYNTHIAC II i. 99
III. OLYNTHIAC III i. 109
IV. PHILIPPIC I i. 68
V. ON THE PEACE i. 120
VI. PHILIPPIC II i. 133
VIII. ON THE CHERSONESE ii. 3
IX. PHILIPPIC III ii. 26
XIV. ON THE NAVAL BOARDS i. 31
XV. FOR THE FREEDOM OF THE RHODIANS i. 56
XVI. FOR THE MEGALOPOLITANS i. 45
XVIII. ON THE CROWN ii. 47
XIX. ON THE EMBASSY i. 144

NOTES ii. 149

INTRODUCTION

Demosthenes, the son of Demosthenes of Paeania in Attica, a rich and highly respected factory-owner, was born in or about the year 384 B.C. He was early left an orphan; his guardians mismanaged his property for their own advantage; and although, soon after coming of age in 366, he took proceedings against them and was victorious in the law-courts, he appears to have recovered comparatively little from them. In preparing for these proceedings he had the assistance of Isaeus, a teacher and writer of speeches who was remarkable for his knowledge of law, his complete mastery of all the aspects of any case with which he had to do, and his skill in dealing with questions of ownership and inheritance. Demosthenes' speeches against his guardians show plainly the influence of Isaeus, and the teacher may have developed in his pupil the thoroughness and the ingenuity in handling legal arguments which afterwards became characteristic of his work.

Apart from this litigation with his guardians, we know little of Demosthenes' youth and early manhood. Various stories have come down to us (for the most part not on the best authority), of his having been inspired to aim at an orator's career by the eloquence and fame of Callistratus; of his having overcome serious physical defects by assiduous practice; of his having failed, nevertheless, owing to imperfections of delivery, in his early appearances before the people, and having been enabled to remedy these by the instruction of the celebrated actor Satyrus; and of his close study of the History of Thucydides. Upon the latter point the evidence of his early style leaves no room for doubt, and the same studies may have contributed to the skill and impressiveness with which, in nearly every oration, he appeals to the events of the past, and sums up the lessons of history. Whether he came personally under the influence either of Plato, the philosopher, or of Isocrates, the greatest rhetorical teacher of his time, and a political pamphleteer of high principles but little practical insight, is much more doubtful. The two men were almost as different in temperament and aims as it was possible to be, but Demosthenes' familiarity with the published speeches of Isocrates, and with the rhetorical principles which Isocrates taught and followed, can scarcely be questioned.

In the early years of his manhood, Demosthenes undertook the composition of speeches for others who were engaged in litigation. This task required not only a very thorough knowledge of law, but the power of assuming, as it were, the character of each separate client, and writing in a tone appropriate to it; and, not less, the ability to interest and to rouse the active sympathy of juries, with whom feeling was perhaps as influential as legal justification. This part, however, of Demosthenes' career only concerns us here in so far as it was an admirable training for his later work in the larger sphere of politics, in which the same qualities of adaptability and of power both to argue cogently and to appeal to the emotions effectively were required in an even higher degree.

At the time when Demosthenes' interest in public affairs was beginning to take an active form, Athens was suffering from the recent loss of some of her most powerful allies. In the year 358 B.C. she had counted within the sphere of her influence not only the islands of Lemnos, Imbros, and Scyros (which had been guaranteed to her by the Peace of Antalcidas in 387), but also the chief cities of Euboea, the islands of Chios, Cos, Rhodes, and Samos, Mytilene in Lesbos, the towns of the Chersonese, Byzantium (a city of the greatest commercial importance), and a number of stations on the south coast of Thrace, as well as Pydna, Potidaea, Methone, and the greater part of the country bordering upon the Thermaic Gulf. But her failure to observe the terms of alliance, laid down when the new league was founded in 378, had led to a revolt, which ended in 355 or 354 in the loss to her of Chios, Cos, Rhodes, and Byzantium, and of some of the ablest of her own commanders, and left her treasury almost empty. About the same time Mytilene and Corcyra also took the opportunity to break with her. Moreover, her position in the Thermaic region was threatened first by Olynthus, at the head of the Chalcidic League, which included over thirty towns; and secondly by Philip, the newly-established King of Macedonia, who seemed likely to displace both Olynthus and Athens from their positions of commanding influence.[1]

Nevertheless, Athens, though unable to face a strong combination, was probably the most powerful single state in Greece. In her equipment and capacity for naval warfare she had no rival, and certainly no other state could vie with her in commercial activity and prosperity. The power of Sparta in the Peloponnese had declined greatly. The establishment of Megalopolis as the centre of a confederacy of Arcadian tribes, and of Messene as an independent city commanding a region once entirely subject to Sparta, had seriously weakened her position; while at the same time her ambition to recover her supremacy kept alive a feeling of unrest throughout the Peloponnese. Of the other states of South Greece, Argos was hostile to Sparta, Elis to the Arcadians; Corinth and other less important cities were not definitely attached to any alliance, but were not powerful enough to carry out any serious movement alone. In North Greece, Thebes, though she lacked great leaders, was still a great power, whose authority throughout Boeotia had been strengthened by the complete or partial annihilation of Platacae, Thespiae, Orchomenus,[2] and Coroneia. In Athens the ill feeling against Thebes was strong, owing to the occupation by the Thebans of Oropus,[2] a frontier town which Athens claimed, and their treatment of the towns just mentioned, towards which the Athenians were kindly disposed. The Phocians, who had until recently been unwilling allies of Thebes, were now hostile and not insignificant neighbours, and about this time entered into relations with both Sparta and Athens. The subject of contention was the possession or control of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, which the Phocians had recently taken by force from the Delphians, who were supported by Thebes; and in the 'Sacred War' to which this act (which was considered to be sacrilege) gave rise in 355 B.C., the Thebans and Locrians fought against the Phocians in the name of the Amphictyonic Council, a body (composed of representatives of tribes and states of very unequal importance[3]) to which the control of the temple traditionally belonged. Thessaly appears to have been at this time more or less under Theban influence, but was immediately dominated by the tyrants of Pherae, though the several cities seem each to have possessed a nominally independent government. The Greek peoples were disunited in fact and unfitted for union by temperament. The twofold desire, felt by almost all the more advanced Greek peoples, for independence on the one hand, and for 'hegemony' or leadership among other peoples, on the other, rendered any effective combination impossible, and made the relations of states to one another uncertain and inconstant. While each people paid respect to the spirit of autonomy, when their own autonomy was in question, they were ready to violate it without scruple when they saw their way to securing a predominant position among their neighbours; and although the ideal of Panhellenic unity had been put before Greece by Gorgias and Isocrates, its realization did not go further than the formation of leagues of an unstable character, each subject, as a rule, to the more or less tyrannical domination of some one member.