His next task is, to provide ways and means for meeting such additional cost of ninety-two talents. Here he produces and reads to the assembly, a special financial scheme, drawn up in writing. Not being actually embodied in the speech, the scheme has been unfortunately lost; though its contents would help us materially to appreciate the views of Demosthenes.[673] It must have been more or less complicated in its details; not a simple proposition for an eisphora or property-tax, which would have been announced in a sentence of the orator’s speech.

Assuming the money, the ships, and the armament for permanent service, to be provided, Demosthenes proposes that a formal law be passed, making such permanent service peremptory; the general in command being held responsible for the efficient employment of the force.[674] The islands, the maritime allies, and the commerce of the Ægean would then become secure; while the profits of Philip from his captures at sea would be arrested.[675] The quarters of the armament might be established, during winter or bad weather, in Skiathos, Thasos, Lemnos, or other adjoining islands, from whence they could act at all times against Philip on his own coast; while from Athens it was difficult to arrive thither either during the prevalence of the Etesian winds or during winter—the seasons usually selected by Philip for his aggressions.[676]

The aggregate means of Athens (Demosthenes affirmed) in men, money, ships, hoplites, horsemen, were greater than could be found anywhere else. But hitherto they had never been properly employed. The Athenians, like awkward pugilists, waited for Philip to strike, and then put up their hand to follow his blow. They never sought to look him in the face—nor to be ready with a good defensive system beforehand—nor to anticipate him in offensive operations.[677] While their religious festivals, the Panathenaic, Dionysiac, and others, were not only celebrated with costly splendor, but prearranged with the most careful pains, so that nothing was ever wanting in detail at the moment of execution—their military force was left without organization or predetermined system. Whenever any new encroachment of Philip was made known, nothing was found ready to meet it; fresh decrees were to be voted, modified, and put in execution, for each special occasion; the time for action was wasted in preparation, and before a force could be placed on shipboard, the moment for execution had passed.[678] This practice of waiting for Philip to act offensively, and then sending aid to the point attacked, was ruinous; the war must be carried on by a standing force put in motion beforehand.[679]

To provide and pay such a standing force, is one of the main points in the project of Demosthenes. The absolute necessity that it shall consist, in large proportion at least, of citizens, is another. To this latter point he reverts again and again, insisting that the foreign mercenaries—sent out to make their pay where or how they could, and unaccompanied by Athenian citizens—were at best useless and untrustworthy. They did more mischief to friends and allies, who were terrified at the very tidings of their approach—than to the enemy.[680] The general, unprovided with funds to pay them, was compelled to follow them wheresoever they chose to go, disregarding his orders received from the city. To try him afterwards for that which he could not help, was unprofitable disgrace. But if the troops were regularly paid; if, besides, a considerable proportion of them were Athenian citizens, themselves interested in success, and inspectors of all that was done; then the general would be found willing and able to attack the enemy with vigor—and might be held to a rigorous accountability, if he did not. Such was the only way in which the formidable and ever-growing force of their enemy Philip could be successfully combated. As matters now stood, the inefficiency of Athenian operations was so ridiculous, that men might be tempted to doubt whether Athens was really in earnest. Her chief military officers—her ten generals, ten taxiarchs, ten phylarchs, and two hipparchs, annually chosen—were busied only in the affairs of the city and in the showy religious processions. They left the real business of war to a foreign general named Menelaus.[681] Such a system was disgraceful. The honor of Athens ought to be maintained by her own citizens, both as generals and as soldiers.

Such are the principal features in the discourse called the First Philippic; the earliest public harangue delivered by Demosthenes to the Athenian assembly, in reference to the war with Philip. It is not merely a splendid piece of oratory, emphatic and forcible in its appeal to the emotions; bringing the audience by many different roads, to the main conviction which the orator seeks to impress; profoundly animated with genuine Pan-hellenic patriotism, and with the dignity of that free Grecian world now threatened by a monarch from without. It has other merits besides, not less important in themselves, and lying more immediately within the scope of the historian. We find Demosthenes, yet only thirty years old—young in political life—and thirteen years before the battle of Chæroneia—taking accurate measure of the political relations between Athens and Philip; examining those relations during the past, pointing out how they had become every year more unfavorable, and foretelling the dangerous contingencies of the future, unless better precautions were taken; exposing with courageous frankness not only the past mismanagement of public men, but also those defective dispositions of the people themselves wherein such management had its root; lastly, after fault found, adventuring on his own responsibility to propose specific measures of correction, and urging upon reluctant citizens a painful imposition of personal hardship as well as of taxation. We shall find him insisting on the same obligation, irksome alike to the leading politicians and to the people,[682] throughout all the Olynthiacs and Philippics. We note his warnings given at this early day, when timely prevention would have been easily practicable; and his superiority to elder politicians like Eubulus and Phokion, in prudent appreciation, in foresight, and in courage of speaking out unpalatable truths. More than twenty years after this period, when Athens had lost the game and was in her phase of humiliation, Demosthenes (in repelling the charges of those who imputed her misfortune to his bad advice) measures the real extent to which a political statesman is properly responsible. The first of all things is—“To see events in their beginnings—to discern tendencies beforehand, and proclaim them beforehand to others—to abridge as much as possible the rubs, impediments, jealousies, and tardy movements, inseparable from the march of a free city—and to infuse among the citizens harmony, friendly feelings, and zeal for the performance of their duties.”[683] The first Philippic is alone sufficient to prove, how justly Demosthenes lays claim to the merit of having “seen events in their beginnings” and given timely warning to his countrymen. It will also go to show, along with other proofs hereafter to be seen, that he was not less honest and judicious in his attempts to fulfil the remaining portion of the statesman’s duty—that of working up his countrymen to unanimous and resolute enterprise; to the pitch requisite not merely for speaking and voting, but for acting and suffering, against the public enemy.

We know neither the actual course, nor the concluding vote, of this debate, wherein Demosthenes took a part so unexpectedly prominent. But we know that neither of the two positive measures which he recommends was carried into effect. The working armament was not sent out, nor was the home-force, destined to be held in reserve for instant movement in case of emergency, ever got ready. It was not until the following month of September (the oration being delivered some time in the first half of 351 B. C.), that any actual force was sent against Philip; and even then nothing more was done than to send the mercenary chief Charidemus to the Chersonese, with ten triremes, and five talents in money, but no soldiers.[684] Nor is there any probability that Demosthenes even obtained a favorable vote of the assembly; though strong votes against Philip were often passed without being ever put in execution afterwards.[685]

Demosthenes was doubtless opposed by those senior statesmen whose duty it would have been to come forward themselves with the same propositions assuming the necessity to be undeniable. But what ground was taken in opposing him, we do not know. There existed at that time in Athens a certain party or section who undervalued Philip as an enemy not really formidable—far less formidable than the Persian king.[686] The reports of Persian force and preparation, prevalent two years before when Demosthenes delivered his harangue on the Symmories, seem still to have continued, and may partly explain the inaction again Philip. Such reports would be magnified, or fabricated, by another Athenian party much more dangerous; in communication with, and probably paid by, Philip himself. To this party Demosthenes makes his earliest allusion in the first Philippic,[687] and reverts to them on many occasions afterwards. We may be very certain that there were Athenian citizens serving as Philip’s secret agents, though we cannot assign their names. It would be not less his interest to purchase such auxiliaries, than to employ paid spies in his operations of war:[688] while the prevalent political antipathies at Athens, coupled with the laxity of public morality in individuals, would render it perfectly practicable to obtain suitable instruments. That not only at Athens, but also at Amphipolis, Potidæa, Olynthus and elsewhere, Philip achieved his successes, partly by purchasing corrupt partisans among the leaders of his enemies—is an assertion so intrinsically probable, that we may readily believe it, though advanced chiefly by unfriendly witnesses. Such corruption alone, indeed, would not have availed him, but it was eminently useful when combined with well-employed force and military genius.

CHAPTER LXXXVIII.
EUBOIC AND OLYNTHIAN WARS.

If even in Athens, at the date of the first Philippic of Demosthenes, the uneasiness about Philip was considerable, much more serious had it become among his neighbors the Olynthians. He had gained them over, four years before, by transferring to them the territory of Anthemus—and the still more important town of Potidæa, captured by his own arms from Athens. Grateful for these cessions, they had become his allies in his war with Athens, whom they hated on every ground. But a material change had since taken place. Since the loss of Methônê, Athens, expelled from the coast of Thrace and Macedonia, had ceased to be a hostile neighbor, or to inspire alarm to the Olynthians; while the immense increase in the power of Philip, combined with his ability and ambition alike manifest, had overlaid their gratitude for the past by a sentiment of fear for the future. It was but too clear that a prince who stretched his encroaching arms in all directions—to Thermopylæ, to Illyria, and to Thrace—would not long suffer the fertile peninsula between the Thermaic and Strymonic gulfs to remain occupied by free Grecian communities. Accordingly, it seems that after the great victory of Philip in Thessaly over the Phokians (in the first half of 352 B. C.), the Olynthians manifested their uneasiness by seceding from alliance with him against Athens. They concluded peace with that city, and manifested such friendly sentiments that an alliance began to be thought possible. This peace seems to have been concluded before November 352 B. C.[689]