In 342 B.C. Philip, whose influence in the Peloponnese had slightly waned, began a fresh campaign in Thrace, and in 341 B.C. had reached the Chersonese. The possession of this district meant the control of the Dardanelles, and, as Athens still depended largely on the Black Sea trade for her corn supply, his progress was a menace to her existence. Diopeithes, an Athenian mercenary captain, had in 343 B.C. taken settlers to Cardia, a town in the Chersonese in nominal alliance with Macedon. Cardia was unwilling to receive them, and Philip sent help to the town. Diopeithes, who, in accordance with the habit of the times, in order to support his fleet, exacted ‘benevolences’ from friends and foes impartially, happened to plunder some districts in Thrace which were subject to Macedon. Philip addressed a letter of remonstrance to Athens, and his adherents in the city demanded the recall of Diopeithes. Demosthenes in his speech On the Chersonese urged that the Chersonese should not be abandoned at such a crisis: a permanent force must be maintained there. He defends the actions of Diopeithes by an appeal to necessity. The Athenians were in the habit of voting armaments for foreign service without voting them supplies; consequently the generals had to supply themselves.
‘All the generals who have ever sailed from Athens take money from Chios, Erythrae, or from any other Asiatic city they can. Those who have one or two ships take less; those with a larger force take more. Those who give, whether in large or small amounts, are not so mad as to give them for nothing; they are purchasing protection for merchants sailing from their ports, immunity from ravages, safe convoy for their own ships and other such advantages. They will tell you that they give “Benevolences,” which is the term applied to these extortions.
‘Now in the present case, since Diopeithes has an army, it is obvious that all these people will give him money. Since he got nothing from you, and has no private means to pay his soldiers with, where else do you imagine he can get money to keep them? Will it fall from the skies? Unfortunately, no. He has to live from day to day on what he can collect and beg and borrow.’[314]
In addition to including a plan of campaign, the speech contains, as many of the orations do, a frank statement of the position of affairs, and the usual invectives against Athenian apathy. The concluding section, however, contains a more solemn warning than is usual, showing that Demosthenes almost despairs of success.
‘If you grasp the situation as I have indicated, and cease to make light of everything, it may be, it may be that even now our affairs may take a favourable turn; but if you continue to sit still and confine your enthusiasm to expressions of applause and votes of approval, but shirk the issue when any action is required of you, I cannot conceive of any eloquence which, without performance of your duty, can guide our State to safety.’[315]
The Third Philippic was delivered in the same year (341 B.C.). The situation is in all essentials the same. Demosthenes again demands that help should be sent to the Chersonese and the safety of Byzantium assured; but he does not enlarge on these points, which have been treated by previous speakers.[316] ‘We must help them, it is true, and take care that no harm befalls them; but our deliberations must be about the great danger which now threatens the whole of Greece.’[317] It is this breadth of view which distinguishes the Third Philippic, and makes it the greatest of all the public harangues.
In the Chersonese Demosthenes had suggested the dispatch of numerous embassies; he now enlarges on this topic; the interests of Athens must be identified with those of all Greece, and all States must be made to realize this. Philip’s designs are against Greek liberty as a whole; Athens must arm and put herself at the head of a great league in the struggle for freedom.
‘I pass over Olynthus, Methone, and Apollonia, and thirty-two cities in the Thracian district, all of which he has so brutally destroyed that it is hard for a visitor to say whether they were ever inhabited. I am silent about the destruction of a great nation, the Phocians. But how fares Thessaly? Has he not deprived the cities of their governments, and established tetrarchies, in order that they may be enslaved, not only city by city, but tribe by tribe? Are not the cities of Euboea now ruled by tyrants, though that island is close on the borders of Thebes and Athens? Does he not expressly state in his letters “I am at peace with those who will obey me”? And his actions corroborate his words. He has started for the Hellespont; before that he visited Ambracia; he holds in the Peloponnese the important city of Elis; only the other day he made plots against Megara. Neither Greece nor the countries beyond it can contain his ambition.’[318]
This short extract is a fair example of Demosthenes’ vigorous use of historical argument, but it can give little idea of the speech as a whole. It abounds, indeed, in enumerations of recent events bearing on the case, and in contrasts between the present and the past.