History of Greece, Volume 12 (of 12)

by George Grote

The rising of the Thebans, not many months after Alexander’s accession, had been the first attempt of the Greeks to emancipate themselves from Macedonian dominion; this enterprise of Agis was the second. Both unfortunately had been partial, without the possibility of any extensive or organized combination beforehand; both ended miserably, riveting the chains of Greece more powerfully than ever. Thus was the self-defensive force of Greece extinguished piecemeal. The scheme of Agis was in fact desperate from the very outset, as against the gigantic power of Alexander; and would perhaps never have been undertaken, had not Agis himself been already compromised in hostility against Macedonia, before the destruction of the Persian force at Issus. This unfortunate prince, without any superior ability (so far as we know), manifested a devoted courage and patriotism worthy of his predecessor Leonidas at Thermopylæ; whose renown stands higher, only because the cause in which he fell ultimately triumphed. The Athenians and Ætolians, neither of whom took part with Agis, were now left, without Thebes and Sparta, as the two great military powers of Greece which will appear presently, when we come to the last struggle for Grecian independence—the Lamian war; better combined and more promising, yet not less disastrous in its result.

Though the strongest considerations of prudence kept Athens quiet during this anti-Macedonian movement in Peloponnesus, a powerful sympathy must have been raised among her citizens while the struggle was going on. Had Agis gained the victory over Antipater, the Athenians might probably have declared in his favor; and although no independent position could have been permanently maintained against so overwhelming an enemy as Alexander, yet considering that he was thoroughly occupied and far in the interior of Asia, Greece might have held out against Antipater for an interval not inconsiderable. In the face of such eventualities, the fears of the macedonizing statesmen now in power at Athens, the hopes of their opponents, and the reciprocal antipathies of both, must have become unusually manifest; so that the reaction afterwards, when the Macedonian power became more irresistible than ever, was considered by the enemies of Demosthenes to offer a favorable opportunity for ruining and dishonoring him.

To the political peculiarity of this juncture we owe the judicial contest between the two great Athenian orators; the memorable accusation of Æschines against Ktesiphon, for having proposed a crown to Demosthenes—and the still more memorable defence of Demosthenes, on behalf of his friend as well as of himself. It was in the autumn or winter of 337-336 B. C., that Ktesiphon had proposed this vote of public honor in favor of Demosthenes, and had obtained the probouleuma or preliminary acquiescence of the senate; it was in the same Attic year, and not long afterwards, that Æschines attacked the proposition under the Graphê Paranomôn, as illegal, unconstitutional, mischievous, and founded on false allegations.[681] More than six years had thus elapsed since the formal entry of the accusation; yet Æschines had not chosen to bring it to actual trial; which indeed could not be done without some risk to himself, before the numerous and popular judicature of Athens. Twice or thrice before his accusation was entered, other persons had moved to confer the same honor upon Demosthenes,[682] and had been indicted under the Graphê Paranomôn; but with such signal ill-success, that their accusers did not obtain so much as one-fifth of the suffrages of the Dikasts, and therefore incurred (under the standing regulation of the Attic law) a penalty of 1000 drachmæ. The like danger awaited Æschines; and although, in reference to the illegality of Ktesiphon’s motion (which was the direct and ostensible purpose aimed at under the Graphê Paranomôn), his indictment was grounded on special circumstances such as the previous accusers may not have been able to show, still it was not his real object to confine himself within this narrow and technical argument. He intended to enlarge the range of accusation, so as to include the whole character and policy of Demosthenes; who would thus, if the verdict went against him, stand publicly dishonored both as citizen and as politician. Unless this latter purpose were accomplished, indeed, Æschines gained nothing by bringing the indictment into court; for the mere entry of the indictment would have already produced the effect of preventing the probouleuma from passing into a decree, and the crown from being actually conferred. Doubtless Ktesiphon and Demosthenes might have forced Æschines to the alternative of either dropping his indictment or bringing it into the Dikastery. But this was a forward challenge, which, in reference to a purely honorary vote, they had not felt bold enough to send; especially after the capture of Thebes in 335 B. C. when the victorious Alexander demanded the surrender of Demosthenes with several other citizens.

In this state of abeyance and compromise—Demosthenes enjoying the inchoate honor of a complimentary vote from the senate, Æschines intercepting it from being matured into a vote of the people—both the vote and the indictment had remained for rather more than six years. But the accuser now felt encouraged to push his indictment to trial, under the reactionary party feeling, following on abortive anti-Macedonian hopes, which succeeded to the complete victory of Antipater over Agis, and which brought about the accusation of anti-Macedonian citizens in Naxos, Thasos, and other Grecian cities also.[683] Amidst the fears prevalent that the victor would carry his resentment still farther, Æschines could now urge that Athens was disgraced by having adopted or even approved the policy of Demosthenes,[684] and that an emphatic condemnation of him was the only way of clearing her from the charge of privity with those who had raised the standard against Macedonian supremacy. In an able and bitter harangue, Æschines first shows that the motion of Ktesiphon was illegal, in consequence of the public official appointments held by Demosthenes at the moment when it was proposed—next he enters at large into the whole life and character of Demosthenes, to prove him unworthy of such an honor, even if there had been no formal grounds of objection. He distributes the entire life of Demosthenes into four periods, the first ending at the peace of 346 B. C., between Philip and the Athenians—the second, ending with the breaking out of the next ensuing war in 341-340 B. C.—the third, ending with the disaster at Chæroneia—the fourth, comprising all the time following.[685] Throughout all the four periods, he denounces the conduct of Demosthenes as having been corrupt, treacherous, cowardly, and ruinous to the city. What is more surprising still—he expressly charges him with gross subservience both to Philip and to Alexander, at the very time when he was taking credit for a patriotic and intrepid opposition to them.[686]

That Athens had undergone sad defeat and humiliation, having been driven from her independent and even presidential position into the degraded character of a subject Macedonian city, since the time when Demosthenes first began political life—was a fact but too indisputable. Æschines even makes this a part of his case; arraigning the traitorous mismanagement of Demosthenes as the cause of so melancholy a revolution, and denouncing him as candidate for public compliment or no better plea than a series of public calamities.[687] Having thus animadverted on the conduct of Demosthenes prior to the battle of Chæroneia, Æschines proceeds to the more recent past, and contends that Demosthenes cannot be sincere in his pretended enmity to Alexander, because he has let slip three successive occasions, all highly favorable, for instigating Athens to hostility against the Macedonians. Of these three occasions, the first was, when Alexander first crossed into Asia; the second, immediately before the battle of Issus; the third, during the flush of success obtained by Agis in Peloponnesus.[688] On neither of these occasions did Demosthenes call for any public action against Macedonia; a proof (according to Æschines) that his anti-Macedonian professions were insincere.

I have more than once remarked, that considering the bitter enmity between the two orators, it is rarely safe to trust the unsupported allegation of either against the other. But in regard to the last-mentioned charges advanced by Æschines, there is enough of known fact, and we have independent evidence, such as is not often before us, to appreciate him as an accuser of Demosthenes. The victorious career of Alexander, set forth in the preceding chapters, proves amply that not one of the three periods, here indicated by Æschines, presented even decent encouragement for a reasonable Athenian patriot, to involve his country in warfare against so formidable an enemy. Nothing can be more frivolous than these charges against Demosthenes, of having omitted promising seasons for anti-Macedonian operations. Partly for this reason, probably, Demosthenes does not notice them in his reply; still more, perhaps, on another ground, that it was not safe to speak out what he thought and felt about Alexander. His reply dwells altogether upon the period before the death of Philip. Of the boundless empire subsequently acquired, by the son of Philip, he speaks only to mourn it as a wretched visitation of fortune, which has desolated alike the Hellenic and the barbaric world—in which Athens has been engulfed along with others—and from which even those faithless and trimming Greeks, who helped to aggrandize Philip, have not escaped better than Athens, nor indeed so well.[689]

I shall not here touch upon the Demosthenic speech De Coronâ in a rhetorical point of view, nor add anything to those encomiums which have been pronounced upon it with one voice, both in ancient and in modern times, as the unapproachable masterpiece of Grecian oratory. To this work it belongs as a portion of Grecian history; a retrospect of the efforts made by a patriot and a statesman to uphold the dignity of Athens and the autonomy of the Grecian world, against a dangerous aggressor from without. How these efforts were directed, and how they lamentably failed, has been recounted in my last preceding volume. Demosthenes here passes them in review, replying to the criminations against his public conduct during the interval of ten years, between the peace of 346 B. C., (or the period immediately preceding it) and the death of Philip. It is remarkable, that though professing to enter upon a defence of his whole public life,[690] he nevertheless can afford to leave unnoticed that portion of it which is perhaps the most honorable to him—the early period of his first Philippics and Olynthiacs—when, though a politician as yet immature and of no established footing, he was the first to descry in the distance the perils threatened by Philip’s aggrandizement, and the loudest in calling for timely and energetic precautions against it; in spite of apathy and murmurs from older politicians as well as from the general public. Beginning with the peace of 346 B. C., Demosthenes vindicates his own share in the antecedents of that event against the charges of Æschines, whom he denounces as the cause of all the mischief; a controversy which I have already tried to elucidate, in my last volume. Passing next to the period after that peace—to the four years first of hostile diplomacy, then of hostile action, against Philip, which ended with the disaster of Chæroneia—Demosthenes is not satisfied with simple vindication. He re-asserts this policy as matter of pride and honor, in spite of its results. He congratulates his countrymen on having manifested a Pan-hellenic patriotism worthy of their forefathers, and takes to himself only the credit of having been forward to proclaim and carry out this glorious sentiment common to all. Fortune has been adverse; yet the vigorous anti-Macedonian policy was no mistake; Demosthenes swears it by the combatants of Marathon, Platæa and Salamis.[691] To have had a foreign dominion obtruded upon Greece, is an overwhelming calamity; but to have had this accomplished without strenuous resistance on the part of Athens, would have been calamity aggravated by dishonor.

Conceived in this sublime strain, the reply of Demosthenes to his rival has an historical value, as a funeral oration of extinct Athenian and Grecian freedom. Six years before, the orator had been appointed by his countrymen to deliver the usual public oration over the warriors slain at Chæroneia. That speech is now lost, but it probably touched upon the same topics. Though the sphere of action, of every Greek city as well as of every Greek citizen, was now cramped and confined by irresistible Macedonian force; there still remained the sentiment of full political freedom and dignity enjoyed during the past—the admiration of ancestors who had once defended it successfully—and the sympathy with leaders who had recently stood forward to uphold it, however unsuccessfully. It is among the most memorable facts in Grecian history, that in spite of the victory of Philip at Chæroneia—in spite of the subsequent conquest of Thebes by Alexander, and the danger of Athens after it—in spite of the Asiatic conquests which had since thrown all Persian force into the hands of the Macedonian king—the Athenian people could never be persuaded either to repudiate Demosthenes, or to disclaim sympathy with his political policy. How much art and ability was employed, to induce them to do so, by his numerous enemies, the speech of Æschines is enough to teach us. And when we consider how easily the public sicken of schemes which end in misfortune—how great a mental relief is usually obtained by throwing blame on unsuccessful leaders—it would have been no matter of surprise, if, in one of the many prosecutions wherein the fame of Demosthenes was involved, the Dikasts had given a verdict unfavorable to him. That he always came off acquitted, and even honorably acquitted, is a proof of rare fidelity and steadiness of mind in the Athenians. It is a proof that those noble, patriotic, and Pan-hellenic sentiments, which we constantly find inculcated in his orations, throughout a period of twenty years, had sunk into the minds of his hearers; and that amidst the many general allegations of corruption against him, loudly proclaimed by his enemies, there was no one well-ascertained fact which they could substantiate before the Dikastery.

The indictment now preferred by Æschines against Ktesiphon only procured for Demosthenes a new triumph. When the suffrages of the Dikasts were counted, Æschines did not obtain so much as one fifth. He became therefore liable to the customary fine of 1000 drachmæ. It appears that he quitted Athens immediately, without paying the fine, and retired into Asia, from whence he never returned. He is said to have opened a rhetorical school at Rhodes, and to have gone into the interior of Asia during the last year of Alexander’s life (at the time when that monarch was ordaining on the Grecian cities compulsory restoration of all their exiles), in order to procure assistance for returning to Athens. This project was disappointed by Alexander’s death.[692]

We cannot suppose that Æschines was unable to pay the fine of 1000 drachmæ, or to find friends who would pay it for him. It was not therefore legal compulsion, but the extreme disappointment and humiliation of so signal a defeat, which made him leave Athens. We must remember that this was a gratuitous challenge sent by himself; that the celebrity of the two rivals had brought together auditors, not merely from Athens, but from various other Grecian cities; and that the effect of the speech of Demosthenes in his own defence,—delivered with all his perfection of voice and action, and not only electrifying hearers by the sublimity of its public sentiment, but also full of admirably managed self-praise, and contemptuous bitterness towards his rival—must have been inexpressibly powerful and commanding. Probably the friends of Æschines became themselves angry with him for having brought the indictment forward. For the effect of his defeat must have been that the vote of the Senate which he indicted, was brought forward and passed in the public assembly; and that Demosthenes must have received a public coronation.[693] In no other way, under the existing circumstances of Athens, could Demosthenes have obtained so emphatic a compliment. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that such a mortification was insupportable to Æschines. He became disgusted with his native city. We read that afterwards, in his rhetorical school at Rhodes, he one day declaimed, as a lesson to his pupils, the successful oration of his rival, De Coronâ. Of course it excited a burst of admiration. “What, if you had heard the beast himself speak it!”—exclaimed Æschines.