As this duel between the king of Macedonia and the manufacturer’s son of Athens was so nearly a combat of equals, it will be well to cast a brief look at the biography of Demosthenes, since we have given so much attention to the formation of Philip’s character.[a]
The father of this great orator was an Athenian by birth, and exercised the trade of an armourer, by which he acquired considerable wealth. He married the daughter of one Gylon who had settled upon the borders of the Euxine Sea and contracted an alliance with a rich heiress of the country.[15] At the age of seven Demosthenes was deprived of his father, who left him a fortune which entitled him to rank with the wealthiest citizens. Though guardians had been appointed to manage his estate and direct his education, they seem to have dilapidated the one, and neglected the other. Left at an early age entirely to himself, he launched out into expenses with all the extravagance and vanity of youth, acted as choregus or president of theatrical entertainments, and equipped a ship of war for the service of the republic. He spent the first part of his life without any fixed purpose or aim, indulging in such a state of indolence and effeminacy, as to have his name stigmatised by a term of reproach [Batalos]. But the seeds of genius, being either allowed to shoot up in wild luxuriance or to lie dormant through neglect, were soon to spring up with amazing vigour. He determined thenceforth to devote himself wholly to the study of eloquence. At that time learning of all kinds, but particularly philosophy and the art of rhetoric, was cultivated with great eagerness by the Athenian youth. Plato had established his school in the Academy, and was attended by a vast concourse. Demosthenes attended it with great assiduity, as well as that of Isæus the rhetorician. After these preparatory studies, he tried his strength against his guardians, whom he obliged to refund a part of his property. Emboldened by this success, he mounted the tribunal to harangue the people upon the state of affairs, but was heard with very little attention, and no signs of approbation. Not discouraged by this unfavourable reception, he made a second attempt and was equally unsuccessful.
As he retired, exceedingly depressed by his ill-success, and determined in his mind to relinquish a pursuit for which nature seemed to have rendered him unfit, by denying him the free use of the organs of speech, and a sufficient quantity of breath to articulate distinctly a sentence of moderate length, he was met by one of his friends, a comedian, who exhorted him to conquer the natural and acquired defects under which he laboured. He instantly set about correcting, with the greatest perseverance and most extraordinary means, his rapid and inarticulate pronunciation, ungraceful and awkward gestures in declaiming, and several natural defects under which he laboured.[c]
The anecdotes of Demosthenes’ struggle with his defects are remembered by many people to whom the very name of King Philip is obscure. These anecdotes rest upon the orator’s own authority. The reader need hardly be reminded of the hours he spent talking with his mouth full of pebbles, shouting against the roar of the stormy ocean, practising his gestures before a mirror, expanding his lungs by running and by declaiming as he climbed the steep hills of which Greece is made, shaving half his head to compel himself to keep indoors at his studies, and shutting himself up for months at a time in an underground room where he copied all Thucydides eight times, and polished his own phrases to incandescence.
Thus prepared, he undertook a losing battle in defence of that system of municipal isolation and jealousy which he thought of as freedom, but which had brought on Greece innumerable crimes and sorrows and kept the little peninsula always under the shadow of complete disaster before a larger foe. In a sense, Demosthenes may be compared with the advocates of States’ Rights in the United States before the Civil War, except that the Americans never dreamed of carrying their theories to such an extent. To put the two instances on a par, it would be necessary to imagine the Southerners of America demanding not merely that the states have no federation whatsoever, but that even the smallest town of each state should go its own petty way.
ÆSCHINES, THE RIVAL OF DEMOSTHENES
Heroic as the figure of Demosthenes is in many respects one must not forget to do justice to the opposition he met, not only from Macedonia but from within his own city. Posterity is likely to generalise too vigorously, and Æschines has suffered more than his due from the fact that he happened to be the opponent of Demosthenes. It is customary to think of Æschines as a traitor, a hypocrite, and the paid attorney of Philip in Athens. Yet it might be well to remember that if his advice had been taken and the Macedonians treated with welcome instead of warfare as preached by Demosthenes, the result would have been exactly the same except that much bloodshed would have been saved and a loathsome amount of intrigue and villainy avoided. When Demosthenes is praised for his determination and persistence in his one idea, Æschines must be praised for the same to the same degree. When sympathy is felt for Demosthenes in the enmity he met, it must be remembered that Æschines suffered exile and suffered it with dignity. Æschines was never proved guilty of accepting money from Macedonia, while Demosthenes gloated over the poverty of Æschines and boasted of his own riches. On the other hand it is known that Demosthenes accepted money from Persia. And, if one may be permitted to distinguish between degrees of guilt in bribery, one might feel that Persian money was far dirtier for a Grecian to handle than the semi-Grecian gold of Macedonia, coming from the hand of a king whose great ambition was to organise Greece into a federated monarchy and lead her against Persia.
Æschines claimed to have been of distinguished blood, and, while Demosthenes declared him to be of the lowest possible origin, and that dishonest, he certainly represented the aristocratic party. His friendship for Philip’s cause cannot be imputed to a cowardly desire for peace at any price, since he proved himself a brave soldier, while Demosthenes threw away his shield and fled from the very battle-ground of Chæronea to which his eloquence had summoned the Greeks. Æschines was a writer of great skill and the three of his orations still extant are rated almost as high as those of Demosthenes. Æschines seems to have had a far better voice and presence than the effeminate student whom posterity thinks of as a majestic thunderer. The good and ill in the character of the latter have been nowhere more briskly summarised than by Prévost-Paradol[d]:
THE UNPOPULARITY OF DEMOSTHENES
“Demosthenes was never entirely popular. He had nothing grand in him but his eloquence and will. Dignity of character was wanting. Is it to be said that the highest virtues were necessary in Athens for the popularity of a political man? By no means. Virtue was a title, but the contrary of virtue had also its influence when it was joined to elegance. For Demosthenes, who owed a ridiculous surname [Batalos] to hidden debauches, and who devoted the rest of his youth to an ungrateful work, had neither the graces of vice nor the dignity of virtue. He was neither Aristides nor Alcibiades. Nor had he the easy levity of Cleon and many other demagogues. He was a man of anxiety and toil. He had not the good-natured and happy insolence of a popular orator, who plays with the people and himself, and enlivens the tribune: neither did he possess that which was the contrary, that is to say, natural dignity, the majestic calm which made Pericles the organ of divine reason, a kind of medium between Athens and its destiny, between the people and the spirit of the republic. Demosthenes was violent and laborious. His discourses smelt of oil, but smoothness was absent from them. It was premeditated vehemence, the result of art as much as of inspiration. In short, the people had seen this orator raise himself slowly from mediocrity, and buy his power with long night studies; he inoculated himself patiently with genius. They had hissed at Demosthenes and had seen him come back stronger; they had hissed again and he had returned all-powerful. The mob is wrong in rarely pardoning such marvels. The mob, with eternal injustice, more willingly gives its approbation to the idleness of genius than to the fertile preparation of work; it adds its partiality in favour of destiny, and the glory which gives itself is more brilliant in its eyes than that which must be conquered. The conduct of Demosthenes, as haughty as his eloquence, would often have irritated a less suspicious democracy. This energetic spirit, nourished by contests, which struggle and effort had alone rendered fruitful, never distrusted its natural impetuosity. Demosthenes applied to political difficulties the same violence he had so happily used against his natural difficulties; he treated his adversaries like the obstacles which had prevented his becoming eloquent. One day an accomplice of Philip, Antiphon, arraigned before the assembly of the people, is sent away acquitted. Demosthenes snatched away the benefit of the popular sentence, arraigned him before the Areopagus, and never rested until he was condemned to death. When has a democracy patiently allowed itself to be thus defended against itself and its judgments broken?