I suspect therefore that the terms of peace proposed by Philokrates met with unqualified support from one of our two rival orators, and with only partial opposition, to one special clause, from the other. However this may be, the proposition passed, with no other modification (so far as we know) except the omission of that clause which specially excepted Halus and the Phokians. Philokrates provided, that all the possessions actually in the hands of each of the belligerent parties, should remain to each, without disturbance from the other;[833] that on these principles, there should be both peace and alliance between Athens with all her allies on the one side, and Philip with all his allies on the other. These were the only parties included in the treaty. Nothing was said about other Greeks, not allies either of Philip or of Athens.[834] Nor was any special mention made about Kersobleptes.[835]
Such was the decree of peace and alliance, enacted on the second of the two assembly-days,—the nineteenth of the month Elaphebolion. Of course, without the fault of any one, it was all to the advantage of Philip. He was in the superior position; and it sanctioned his retention of all his conquests. For Athens, the inferior party, the benefit to be expected was, that she would prevent these conquests from being yet farther multiplied, and protect herself against being driven from bad to worse.
But it presently appeared that even thus much was not realized. On the twenty-fifth day of the same month[836] (six days after the previous assembly), a fresh assembly was held, for the purpose of providing ratification by solemn oath for the treaty which had been just decreed. It was now moved and enacted, that the same ten citizens, who had been before accredited to Philip, should again be sent to Macedonia for the purpose of receiving the oaths from him and from his allies.[837] Next, it was resolved that the Athenians, together with the deputies of their allies then present in Athens, should take the oath forthwith, in the presence of Philip’s envoys.
But now arose the critical question, Who were to be included as allies of Athens? Were the Phokians and Kersobleptes to be included? The one and the other represented those two capital positions,[838] Thermopylæ and the Hellespont, which Philip was sure to covet, and which it most behooved Athens to ensure against him. The assembly, by its recent vote, had struck out the special exclusion of the Phokians proposed by Philokrates, thus by implication admitting them as allies along with the rest. They were in truth allies of old standing and valuable; they had probably envoys present in Athens, but no deputies sitting in the synod. Nor had Kersobleptes any such deputy in that body; but a citizen of Lampsakus, named Kritobulus, claimed on this occasion to act for him, and to take the oaths in his name.
As to the manner of dealing with Kersobleptes, Æschines tells us two stories (one in the earlier oration, the other in the later) quite different from each other; and agreeing only in this—that in both Demosthenes is described as one of the presiding magistrates of the public assembly, as having done all that he could to prevent the envoy of Kersobleptes from being admitted to take the oaths as an ally of Athens. Amidst such discrepancies, to state in detail what passed is impossible. But it seems clear,—both from Æschines (in his earliest speech) and Demosthenes,—first, that the envoy from Kersobleptes, not having a seat in the confederate synod, but presenting himself and claiming to be sworn as an ally of Athens, found his claim disputed; secondly, that upon this dispute arising, the question was submitted to the vote of the public assembly, who decided that Kersobleptes was an ally, and should be admitted to take the oath as such.[839]
Antipater and Parmenio, on the part of Philip, did not refuse to recognize Kersobleptes as an ally of Athens, and to receive his oath. But in regard to the Phokians, they announced a determination distinctly opposite. They gave notice, at or after the assembly of the 25th Elaphebolion, that Philip positively refused to admit the Phokians as parties to the convention.
This determination, formally announced by Antipater at Athens, must probably have been made known by Philip himself to Philokrates and Æschines, when on mission in Macedonia. Hence Philokrates, in his motion about the terms of peace, had proposed that the Phokians and Halus should be specially excluded (as I have already related). Now, however, when the Athenian assembly, by expressly repudiating such exclusion, had determined that the Phokians should be received as parties, while the envoys of Philip were not less express in rejecting them,—the leaders of the peace, Æschines and Philokrates, were in great embarrassment. They had no other way of surmounting the difficulty, except by holding out mendacious promises, and unauthorized assurances of future intention in the name of Philip. Accordingly, they confidently announced that the King of Macedon, though precluded by his relations with the Thebans and Thessalians (necessary to him while he remained at war with Athens), from openly receiving the Phokians as allies, was nevertheless in his heart decidedly adverse to the Thebans; and that, if his hands were once set free by concluding peace with Athens, he would interfere in the quarrel just in the manner that the Athenians would desire; that he would uphold the Phokians, put down the insolence of Thebes, and even break up the integrity of the city; restoring also the autonomy of Thespiæ, Platæa and the other Bœotian towns, now in Theban dependence. The general assurances,—previously circulated by Aristodemus, Ktesiphon, and others,—of Philip’s anxiety to win favorable opinions from the Athenians, were now still farther magnified into a supposed community of antipathy against Thebes; and even into a disposition to compensate Athens for the loss of Amphipolis, by making her complete mistress of Eubœa as well as by recovering for her Orôpus.
By such glowing fabrications and falsehoods, confidently asseverated, Philokrates, Æschines, and the other partisans of Philip present, completely deluded the assembly; and induced them, not indeed to decree the special exclusion of the Phokians, as Philokrates had at first proposed,—but to swear the convention with Antipater and Parmenio without the Phokians.[840] These latter were thus shut out in fact, though by the general words of the peace, Athens had recognized their right to be included. Their deputies were probably present, claimed to be admitted, and were refused by Antipater, without any peremptory protest on the part of Athens.
This tissue, not of mere exaggerations, but of impudent and monstrous falsehood, respecting the purposes of Philip,—will be seen to continue until he had carried his point of penetrating within the pass of Thermopylæ, and even afterwards. We can hardly wonder that the people believed it, when proclaimed and guaranteed to them by Philokrates, Æschines, and the other envoys, who had been sent into Macedonia for the express purpose of examining on the spot and reporting, and whose assurance was the natural authority for the people to rely upon. In this case, the deceptions found easier credence and welcome because they were in complete harmony with the wishes and hopes of Athens, and with the prevalent thirst for peace. To betray allies like the Phokians appeared of little consequence, when once it became a settled conviction that the Phokians themselves would be no losers by it. But this plea, though sufficient as a tolerable excuse for the Athenian people, will not serve for a statesman like Demosthenes; who, on this occasion (as far as we can make out even from his own language), did not enter any emphatic protest against the tacit omission of the Phokians, though he had opposed the clause (in the motion of Philokrates) which formally omitted them by name. Three months afterwards, when the ruin of the isolated Phokians was about to be consummated as a fact, we shall find Demosthenes earnest in warning and denunciation; but there is reason to presume that his opposition[841] was at best only faint, when the positive refusal of Antipater was first proclaimed against that acquiescence on the part of Athens, whereby the Phokians were really surrendered to Philip. Yet in truth this was the great diplomatic turning-point, from whence the sin of Athens, against duty to allies as well as against her own security, took its rise. It was a false step of serious magnitude, difficult, if not impossible, to retrieve afterwards. Probably the temper of the Athenians, then eager for peace, trembling for the lives of their captives, and prepossessed with the positive assurances of Æschines and Philokrates,—would have heard with repugnance any strong protest against abandoning the Phokians, which threatened to send Antipater home in disgust and intercept the coming peace,—the more so as Demosthenes, if he called in question the assurances of Æschines as to the projects of Philip, would have no positive facts to produce in refuting them, and would be constrained to take the ground of mere scepticism and negation;[842] of which a public, charmed with hopeful auguries and already disarmed through the mere comfortable anticipations of peace, would be very impatient. Nevertheless, we might have expected from a statesman like Demosthenes, that he would have begun his energetic opposition to the disastrous treaty of 346 B. C., at that moment when the most disastrous and disgraceful portion of it,—the abandonment of the Phokians,—was first shuffled in.
After the assembly of the 25th Elaphebolion, Antipater administered the oaths of peace and alliance to Athens and to all her other allies (seemingly including the envoy of Kersobleptes) in the Board-room of the Generals.[843] It now became the duty of the ten Athenian envoys, with one more from the confederate synod,—the same persons who had been employed in the first embassy,—to go and receive the oaths from Philip. Let us see how this duty was performed.