One thousand Athenian citizens perished in this disastrous field; two thousand more fell into the hands of Philip as prisoners.[1101] The Theban loss is said also to have been terrible, as well as the Achæan.[1102] But we do not know the numbers; nor have we any statement of the Macedonian loss. Demosthenes, himself present in the ranks of the hoplites, shared in the flight of his defeated countrymen. He is accused by his political enemies of having behaved with extreme and disgraceful cowardice; but we see plainly from the continued confidence and respect shown to him by the general body of his countrymen, that they cannot have credited the imputation. The two Athenian generals Chares and Lysikles, both escaped from the field. The latter was afterwards publicly accused at Athens by the orator Lykurgus—a citizen highly respected for his integrity and diligence in the management of the finances, and severe in arraigning political delinquents. Lysikles was condemned to death by the Dikastery.[1103] What there was to distinguish his conduct from that of his colleague Chares—who certainly was not condemned, and is not even stated to have been accused—we do not know. The memory of the Theban general Theagenes[1104] also, though he fell in the battle, was assailed by charges of treason.
Unspeakable was the agony at Athens, on the report of this disaster, with a multitude of citizens as yet unknown left on the field or prisoners, and a victorious enemy within three or four days’ march of the city. The whole population, even old men, women, and children, were spread about the streets in all the violence of grief and terror, interchanging effusions of distress and sympathy, and questioning every fugitive as he arrived about the safety of their relatives in the battle.[1105] The flower of the citizens of military age had been engaged; and before the extent of loss had been ascertained, it was feared that none except the elders would be left to defend the city. At length the definite loss became known: severe indeed and terrible—yet not a total shipwreck, like that of the army of Nikias in Sicily.
As on that trying occasion, so now: amidst all the distress and alarm, it was not in the Athenian character to despair. The mass of citizens hastened unbidden to form a public assembly,[1106] wherein the most energetic resolutions were taken for defence. Decrees were passed enjoining every one to carry his family and property out of the open country of Attica into the various strongholds; directing the body of the senators, who by general rule were exempt from military service, to march down in arms to Peiræus, and put that harbor in condition to stand a siege; placing every man without exception at the disposal of the generals, as a soldier for defence, and imposing the penalties of treason on every one who fled;[1107] enfranchising all slaves fit for bearing arms, granting the citizenship to metics under the same circumstances, and restoring to the full privilege of citizens those who had been disfranchised by judicial sentence.[1108] This last-mentioned decree was proposed by Hyperides; but several others were moved by Demosthenes, who, notwithstanding the late misfortune of the Athenian arms, was listened to with undiminished respect and confidence. The general measures requisite for strengthening the walls, opening ditches, distributing military posts and constructing earthwork, were decreed on his motion; and he seems to have been named member of a special Board for superintending the fortifications.[1109] Not only he, but also most of the conspicuous citizens and habitual speakers in the assembly, came forward with large private contributions to meet the pressing wants of the moment.[1110] Every man in the city lent a hand to make good the defective points in the fortification. Materials were obtained by felling the trees near the city, and even by taking stones from the adjacent sepulchres[1111]—as had been done after the Persian war when the walls were built under the contrivance of Themistokles.[1112] The temples were stripped of the arms suspended within them, for the purpose of equipping unarmed citizens.[1113] By such earnest and unanimous efforts, the defences of the city and of Peiræus were soon materially improved. At sea Athens had nothing to fear. Her powerful naval force was untouched, and her superiority to Philip on that element incontestable. Envoys were sent to Trœzen, Epidaurus, Andros, Keos, and other places, to solicit aid, and collect money; in one or other of which embassies Demosthenes served, after he had provided for the immediate exigencies of defence.[1114]
What was the immediate result of these applications to other cities, we do not know. But the effect produced upon some of these Ægean islands by the reported prostration of Athens, is remarkable. An Athenian citizen named Leokrates, instead of staying at Athens to join in the defence, listened only to a disgraceful timidity,[1115] and fled forthwith from Peiræus with his family and property. He hastened to Rhodes, where he circulated the false news that Athens was already taken and the Peiræus under siege. Immediately on hearing this intelligence, and believing it to be true, the Rhodians with their triremes began a cruise to seize the merchant-vessels at sea.[1116] Hence we learn, indirectly, that the Athenian naval power constituted the standing protection for these merchant vessels; insomuch that so soon as that protection was removed, armed cruisers began to prey upon them from various islands in the Ægean.
Such were the precautions taken at Athens after this fatal day. But Athens lay at a distance of three or four days’ march from the field of Chæroneia; while Thebes, being much nearer, bore the first attack of Philip. Of the behavior of that prince after his victory, we have contradictory statements. According to one account, he indulged in the most insulting and licentious exultation on the field of battle, jesting especially on the oratory and motions of Demosthenes; a temper, from which he was brought round by the courageous reproof of Demades, then his prisoner as one of the Athenian hoplites.[1117] At first he even refused to grant permission to inter the slain, when the herald came from Lebadeia to make the customary demand.[1118] According to another account, the demeanor of Philip towards the defeated Athenians was gentle and forbearing.[1119] However the fact may have stood as to his first manifestations, it is certain that his positive measures were harsh towards Thebes and lenient towards Athens. He sold the Theban captives into slavery; he is said also to have exacted a price for the liberty granted to bury the Theban slain—which liberty, according to Grecian custom, was never refused and certainly never sold, by the victor. Whether Thebes made any farther resistance, or stood a siege, we do not know. But presently the city fell into Philip’s power, who put to death several of the leading citizens, banished others, and confiscated the property of both. A council of Three Hundred—composed of philippizing Thebans, for the most part just recalled from exile—was invested with the government of the city, and with powers of life and death over every one.[1120] The state of Thebes became much the same as it had been when the Spartan Phœbidas, in concert with the Theban party headed by Leontiades, surprised the Kadmeia. A Macedonian garrison was now placed in the Kadmeia, as a Spartan garrison had been placed then. Supported by this garrison, the philippizing Thebans were uncontrolled masters of the city; with full power, and no reluctance, to gratify their political antipathies. At the same time, Philip restored the minor Bœotian towns—Orchomenus, and Platæa, probably also Thespiæ and Koroneia—to the condition of free communities instead of subjection to Thebes.[1121]
At Athens also, the philippizing orators raised their voices loudly and confidently, denouncing Demosthenes and his policy. New speakers,[1122] who would hardly have come forward before, were now put up against him. The accusations however altogether failed; the people continued to trust him, omitting no measure of defence which he suggested. Æschines, who had before disclaimed all connection with Philip, now altered his tone, and made boast of the ties of friendship and hospitality subsisting between that prince and himself.[1123] He tendered his services to go as envoy to the Macedonian camp; whither he appears to have been sent, doubtless with others, perhaps with Xenokrates and Phokion.[1124] Among them was Demades also, having been just released from his captivity. Either by the persuasions of Demades, or by a change in his own dispositions, Philip had now become inclined to treat with Athens on favorable terms. The bodies of the slain Athenians were burned by the victors, and their ashes collected to be carried to Athens; though the formal application of the herald to the same effect, had been previously refused.[1125] Æschines (according to the assertion of Demosthenes) took part as a sympathizing guest in the banquet and festivities whereby Philip celebrated his triumph over Grecian liberty.[1126] At length Demades with the other envoys returned to Athens, reporting the consent of Philip to conclude peace, to give back the numerous prisoners in his hands, and also to transfer Oropus from the Thebans to Athens.
Demades proposed the conclusion of peace to the Athenian assembly, by whom it was readily decreed. To escape invasion and siege by the Macedonian army, was doubtless an unspeakable relief; while the recovery of the two thousand prisoners without ransom, was an acquisition of great importance, not merely to the city collectively, but to the sympathies of numerous relatives. Lastly, to regain Oropus—a possession which they had once enjoyed, and for which they had long wrangled with the Thebans—was a farther cause of satisfaction. Such conditions were doubtless acceptable at Athens. But there was a submission to be made on the other side, which to the contemporaries of Perikles would have seemed intolerable, even as the price of averted invasion or recovered captives. The Athenians were required to acknowledge the exaltation of Philip to the headship of the Grecian world, and to promote the like acknowledgment by all other Greeks, in a congress to be speedily convened. They were to renounce all pretensions of headship, not only for themselves, but for every other Grecian state; to recognize not Sparta or Thebes, but the king of Macedon, as Pan-hellenic chief; to acquiesce in the transition of Greece from the position of a free, self-determining, political aggregate, into a provincial dependency of the kings of Pella and Ægæ. It is not easy to conceive a more terrible shock to that traditional sentiment of pride and patriotism, inherited from forefathers, who, after repelling and worsting the Persians, had first organized the maritime Greeks into a confederacy running parallel with and supplementary to the non-maritime Greeks allied with Sparta; thus keeping out foreign dominion and casting the Grecian world into a system founded on native sympathies and free government. Such traditional sentiment, though it no longer governed the character of the Athenians or impressed upon them motives of action, had still a strong hold upon their imagination and memory, where it had been constantly kept alive by the eloquence of Demosthenes and others. The peace of Demades, recognizing Philip as chief of Greece, was a renunciation of all this proud historical past, and the acceptance of a new and degraded position, for Athens as well as for Greece generally.
Polybius praises the generosity of Philip in granting such favorable terms, and even affirms, not very accurately, that he secured thereby the steady gratitude and attachment of the Athenians.[1127] But Philip would have gained nothing by killing his prisoners; not to mention that he would have provoked an implacable spirit of revenge among the Athenians. By selling his prisoners for slaves he would have gained something, but by the use actually made of them he gained more. The recognition of his Hellenic supremacy by Athens was the capital step for the prosecution of his objects. It ensured him against dissentients among the remaining Grecian states, whose adhesion had not yet been made certain, and who might possibly have stood out against a proposition so novel and so anti-Hellenic, had Athens set them the example. Moreover, if Philip had not purchased the recognition of Athens in this way, he might have failed in trying to extort it by force. For though, being master of the field, he could lay waste Attica with impunity, and even establish a permanent fortress in it like Dekeleia—yet the fleet of Athens was as strong as ever, and her preponderance at sea irresistible. Under these circumstances, Athens and Peiræus might have been defended against him, as Byzantium and Perinthus had been, two years before; the Athenian fleet might have obstructed his operations in many ways; and the siege of Athens might have called forth a burst of Hellenic sympathy, such as to embarrass his farther progress. Thebes—an inland city, hated by the other Bœotian cities—was prostrated by the battle of Chæroneia, and left without any means of successful defence. But the same blow was not absolutely mortal to Athens, united in her population throughout all the area of Attica, and superior at sea. We may see therefore, that—with such difficulties before him if he pushed the Athenians to despair—Philip acted wisely in employing his victory and his prisoners to procure her recognition of his headship. His political game was well-played, now as always; but to the praise of generosity bestowed by Polybius, he has little claim.
Besides the recognition of Philip as chief of Greece, the Athenians, on the motion of Demades, passed various honorary and complimentary votes in his favor; of what precise nature we do not know.[1128] Immediate relief from danger, with the restoration of two thousand captive citizens, were sufficient to render the peace popular at the first moment; moreover, the Athenians, as if conscious of failing resolution and strength, were now entering upon that career of flattery to powerful kings, which we shall hereafter find them pushing to disgraceful extravagance. It was probably during the prevalence of this sentiment, which did not long continue, that the youthful Alexander of Macedon, accompanied by Antipater, paid a visit to Athens.[1129]
Meanwhile the respect enjoyed by Demosthenes among his countrymen was noway lessened. Though his political opponents thought the season favorable for bringing many impeachments against him, none of them proved successful: and when the time came for electing a public orator to deliver the funeral discourse at the obsequies celebrated for the slain at Chæroneia—he was invested with that solemn duty, not only in preference to Æschines, who was put up in competition, but also to Demades the recent mover of the peace[1130]—and honored with strong marks of esteem and sympathy from the surviving relatives of these gallant citizens. Moreover it farther appears that Demosthenes was continued in an important financial post as one of the joint managers of the Theôric Fund, and as member of a Board for purchasing corn; he was also continued, or shortly afterwards re-appointed, superintendent of the walls and defences of the city. The orator Hyperides, the political coadjutor of Demosthenes, was impeached by Aristogeiton under the Graphê Paranomon, for his illegal and unconstitutional decree (proposed under the immediate terror of the defeat at Chæroneia), to grant manumission to the slaves, citizenship to metics, and restoration of citizenship to those who had been disfranchised by judicial sentence. The occurrence of peace had removed all necessity for acting upon this decree; nevertheless an impeachment was entered and brought against its mover. Hyperides, unable to deny its illegality, placed his defence on the true and obvious ground—“The Macedonian arms (he said) darkened my vision. It was not I who moved the decree; it was the battle of Chæroneia.”[1131] The substantive defence was admitted by the Dikastery; while the bold oratorical turn attracted notice from rhetorical critics.