The courtiers were indignant at such an answer, but Alexander laughed, and being pleased with the philosopher’s indifference to his rank, he said to them, ‘If I were not Alexander, I should like to be Diogenes.’
Soon after this the king, believing that he had secured the fealty of Greece, went back to Macedon. In the spring of 335 B.C. he hoped to set out to invade Asia.
But the wild tribes on the borders of Macedon began to be restless, and the king was forced to subdue these foes nearer home before he went to Asia. While he was driving them beyond his borders, a rumour that he was dead reached Greece.
If Alexander was dead it was a good chance, thought the Thebans, to drive the Macedonians from their citadel, and without waiting to find out if the rumour was true they revolted. Demosthenes tried to persuade the Athenians to go to the help of the Thebans, but although his eloquence moved them it had not power to make them act.
The Thebans soon found to their cost that Alexander was not dead. He was, indeed, on his way to Greece to punish them for revolting.
Outside the walls of their city he halted, so that the citizens might submit, if so they willed. But they, still dreaming of liberty, refused to surrender.
Then Alexander attacked the city and captured it with little difficulty. He determined to give the other cities in Greece a lesson by punishing the rebels severely. So he pulled down their houses and utterly destroyed their town, leaving untouched only the temples, and a house in which a great poet named Pindar had dwelt.
Demosthenes was bitterly disappointed that the Athenians had not sent to help the Thebans. He feared, too, that Alexander would now march against Athens, and destroy her as he had destroyed Thebes. But the king only sent to demand that eight of the orators who had done their best to incite the people to rebel against him, should be sent to him as hostages.
Demosthenes would have been among the eight, and he urged the Athenians not to ‘hand over their sheep-dogs to the wolf.’ But Phocion said that it would be wise to do as Alexander asked.
At length the assembly sent Damocles to the king to plead the cause of his comrades, for he was, after Demosthenes, the greatest orator in Athens.