Next year (323 B.C.) Alexander died. Then the voice of Demosthenes, calling Greece to arms, rang out like a trumpet. Early in August 322 the battle of Crannon decided the End of Lamian War. Lamian War against Greece. Antipater demanded, as the condition on which he would refrain from besieging Athens, the surrender of the leading patriots. Demades moved the decree of the Assembly by which Demosthenes, Hypereides, and some others were condemned to death as Demosthenes condemned. traitors. On the 20th of Boedromion (September 16) 322, a Macedonian garrison occupied Munychia. It was a day of solemn and happy memories, a day devoted, in the celebration of the Great Mysteries, to sacred joy,—the day on which the glad procession of the Initiated returned from Eleusis to Athens. It happened, however, to have another association, more significant than any ironical contrast for the present purpose of Antipater. It was the day on which, thirteen years before, Alexander had punished the rebellion of Thebes with annihilation.

The condemned men had fled to Aegina. Parting there from Hypereides and the rest, Demosthenes went on to Calauria, a small island off the coast of Argolis. In Calauria there Flight to Calauria. was an ancient temple of Poseidon, once a centre of Minyan and Ionian worship, and surrounded with a peculiar sanctity as having been, from time immemorial, an inviolable refuge for the pursued. Here Demosthenes sought asylum. Archias of Thurii, a man who, like Aeschines, had begun life as a tragic actor, and who was now in the pay of Antipater, soon traced the fugitive, landed in Calauria, and appeared before the temple of Poseidon with a body of Thracian spearmen. Plutarch’s picturesque narrative bears the marks of artistic elaboration. Demosthenes had dreamed the night before that he and Archias were competing for a prize as tragic actors; the house applauded Demosthenes; but his chorus was shabbily equipped, and Archias gained the prize. Archias was not the man to stick at sacrilege. In Aegina, Hypereides and the others had been taken from the shrine of Aeacus. But he hesitated to violate an asylum so peculiarly sacred as the Calaurian temple. Standing before its open door, with his Thracian soldiers around him, he endeavoured to prevail on Demosthenes to quit the holy precinct. Antipater would be certain to pardon him. Demosthenes sat silent, with his eyes fixed on the ground. At last, as the emissary persisted in his bland persuasions, he looked up and said,—“Archias, you never moved me by your acting, and you will not move me now by your promises.” Archias lost his temper, and began to threaten. “Now,” rejoined Demosthenes, “you speak like a real Macedonian oracle; before you were acting. Wait a moment, then, till I write to my friends.” With these words, Demosthenes withdrew into the inner part of the temple,—still visible, however, from the entrance. He took out a roll of paper, as if he were going to write, put the pen to his mouth, and bit it, as was his habit in composing. Then he threw his head back, and drew his cloak over it. The Thracian spearmen, who were watching him from the door, began to gibe at his cowardice. Death. Archias went in to him, encouraged him to rise, repeated his old arguments, talked to him of reconciliation with Antipater. By this time Demosthenes felt that the poison which he had sucked from the pen was beginning to work. He drew the cloak from his face, and looked steadily at Archias. “Now you can play the part of Creon in the tragedy as soon as you like,” he said, “and cast forth my body unburied. But I, O gracious Poseidon, quit thy temple while I yet live; Antipater and his Macedonians have done what they could to pollute it.” He moved towards the door, calling to them to support his tottering steps. He had just passed the altar of the god, when he fell, and with a groan gave up the ghost (October 322 B.C.).

As a statesman, Demosthenes needs no epitaph but his own words in the speech “On the Crown,”—I say that, if the event had been manifest to the whole world beforehand, not even then Political character. ought Athens to have forsaken this course, if Athens had any regard for her glory, or for her past, or for the ages to come. The Persian soldier in Herodotus, following Xerxes to foreseen ruin, confides to his fellow-guest at the banquet that the bitterest pain which man can know is πολλὰ φρονέοντα μηδενὸς κρατέειν,—complete, but helpless, prescience. In the grasp of a more inexorable necessity, the champion of Greek freedom was borne onward to a more tremendous catastrophe than that which strewed the waters of Salamis with Persian wrecks and the field of Plataea with Persian dead; but to him, at least, it was given to proclaim aloud the clear and sure foreboding that filled his soul, to do all that true heart and free hand could do for his cause, and, though not to save, yet to encourage, to console and to ennoble. As the inspiration of his life was larger and higher than the mere courage of resistance, so his merit must be regarded as standing altogether outside and above the struggle with Macedon. The great purpose which he set before him was to revive the public spirit, to restore the political vigour, and to re-establish the Panhellenic influence of Athens,—never for her own advantage merely, but always in the interest of Greece. His glory is, that while he lived he helped Athens to live a higher life. Wherever the noblest expressions of her mind are honoured, wherever the large conceptions of Pericles command the admiration of statesmen, wherever the architect and the sculptor love to dwell on the masterpieces of Ictinus and Pheidias, wherever the spell of ideal beauty or of lofty contemplation is exercised by the creations of Sophocles or of Plato, there it will be remembered that the spirit which wrought in all these would have passed sooner from among men, if it had not been recalled from a trance, which others were content to mistake for the last sleep, by the passionate breath of Demosthenes.

The orator in whom artistic genius was united, more perfectly than in any other man, with moral enthusiasm and with intellectual grasp, has held in the modern world the same Oratory. rank which was accorded to him in the old; but he cannot enjoy the same appreciation. Macaulay’s ridicule has rescued from oblivion the criticism which pronounced the eloquence of Chatham to be more ornate than that of Demosthenes, and less diffuse than that of Cicero. Did the critic, asks Macaulay, ever hear any speaking that was less ornamented than that of Demosthenes, or more diffuse than that of Cicero? Yet the critic’s remark was not so pointless as Macaulay thought it. Sincerity and intensity are, indeed, to the modern reader, the most obvious characteristics of Demosthenes. His style is, on the whole, singularly free from what we are accustomed to regard as rhetorical embellishment. Where the modern orator would employ a wealth of imagery, or elaborate a picture in exquisite detail, Demosthenes is content with a phrase or a word. Burke uses, in reference to Hyder Ali, the same image which Demosthenes uses in reference to Philip. “Compounding all the materials of fury, havoc, desolation, into one black cloud, he hung for a while on the declivity of the mountains. Whilst the authors of all these evils were idly and stupidly gazing on this menacing meteor, which darkened all their horizon, it suddenly burst, and poured down the whole of its contents upon the plains of the Carnatic.” Demosthenes forbears to amplify. “The people gave their voice, and the danger which hung upon our borders went by like a cloud.” To our modern feeling, the eloquence of Demosthenes exhibits everywhere a general stamp of earnest and simple strength. But it is well to remember the charge made against the style of Demosthenes by a contemporary Greek orator, and the defence offered by the best Greek critic of oratory. Aeschines reproached the diction of Demosthenes with excess of elaboration and adornment (περιεργία). Dionysius, in reply, admits that Demosthenes does at times depart from simplicity,—that his style is sometimes elaborately ornate and remote from the ordinary usage. But, he adds, Demosthenes adopts this manner where it is justified by the elevation of his theme. The remark may serve to remind us of our modern disadvantage for a full appreciation of Demosthenes. The old world felt, as we do, his moral and mental greatness, his fire, his self-devotion, his insight. But it felt also, as we can never feel, the versatile perfection of his skill. This it was that made Demosthenes unique to the ancients. The ardent patriot, the far-seeing statesman, were united in his person with the consummate and unapproachable artist. Dionysius devoted two special treatises to Demosthenes,—one on his language and style (λεκτικὸς τόπος), the other on his treatment of subject-matter (πραγματικὸς τόπος). The latter is lost. The former is one of the best essays in literary criticism which antiquity has bequeathed to us. The idea which it works out is that Demosthenes has perfected Greek prose by fusing in a glorious harmony the elements which had hitherto belonged to separate types. The austere dignity of Antiphon, the plain elegance of Lysias, the smooth and balanced finish of that middle or normal character which is represented by Isocrates, have come together in Demosthenes. Nor is this all. In each species he excels the specialists. He surpasses the school of Antiphon in perspicuity, the school of Lysias in verve, the school of Isocrates in variety, in felicity, in symmetry, in pathos, in power. Demosthenes has at command all the discursive brilliancy which fascinates a festal audience. He has that power of concise and lucid narration, of terse reasoning, of persuasive appeal, which is required by the forensic speaker. His political eloquence can worthily image the majesty of the state, and enforce weighty counsels with lofty and impassioned fervour. A true artist, he grudged no labour which could make the least part of his work more perfect. Isocrates spent ten years on the Panegyricus. After Plato’s death, a manuscript was found among his papers with the first eight words of the Republic arranged in several different orders. What wonder, then, asks the Greek critic, if the diligence of Demosthenes was no less incessant and minute? “To me,” he says, “it seems far more natural that a man engaged in composing political discourses, imperishable memorials of his power, should neglect not even the smallest details, than that the veneration of painters and sculptors, who are darkly showing forth their manual tact and toil in a corruptible material, should exhaust the refinements of their art on the veins, on the feathers, on the down of the lip, and the like niceties.”

More than half of the sixty-one speeches extant under the name of Demosthenes are certainly or probably spurious. The results to which the preponderance of opinion leans are given Works. in the following table. Those marked a were already rejected or doubted in antiquity; those marked m, first in modern times:[3]

I. DELIBERATIVE SPEECHES.
Genuine.
Or.14.On the Navy Boards354B.C.
Or.16.For the People of Megalopolis352"
Or.4.First Philippic351"
Or.15.For the Rhodians351"
Or.1.First Olynthiac349"
Or.2.Second Olynthiac349"
Or.3.Third Olynthiac348"
Or.5.On the Peace346"
Or.6.Second Philippic344"
Or.8.On the Affairs of the Chersonese341"
Or.9.Third Philippic341"
Spurious.
(a)Or.7.On Halonnesus (by Hegesippus)342B.C.
Rhetorical Forgeries.
(a)Or.17.On the Treaty with Alexander.
(a)Or.10.Fourth Philippic.
(m)Or.11.Answer to Philip’s Letter.[4]
(m)Or.12.Philip’s Letter.
(m)Or.13.On the Assessment (ρύντξις).
II. FORENSIC SPEECHES.
A. In Public Causes.
Genuine.
Or.22.In (κατά) Androtionem355B.C.
Or.20.Contra (πρός) Leptinem354"
Or.24.In Timocratem352"
Or.23.In Aristocratem352"
Or.21.In Midiam349"
Or.19.On the Embassy343"
Or.18.On the Crown330"
Spurious.
(a)Or.58.In Theocrinem339B.C.
(a)Or.25, 26.In Aristogitona I. and II. (Rhetorical forgeries).
B. In Private Causes.
Genuine.
Or.27, 28.In Aphobum I. et II.364B.C.
(m)Or. 30, 31.Contra Onetora I. et II.362"
Or.41.Contra Spudiam?"
(m)Or.55.Contra Calliclem?
Or.54.In Cononem356"
Or.36.Pro Phormione352"
(m)Or.39.Contra Boeotum de Nomine350"
Or.37.Contra Pantaenetum346-5"
(m)Or.38.Contra Nausimachum et Diopithem?
SPURIOUS.
(The first eight of the following are given by Schäfer to Apollodorus.)
(m)Or.52.Contra Callippum.369-8B.C.
(a)Or.53.Contra Nicostratumafter 368"
(a)Or.49.Contra Timotheum362"
(m)Or.50.Contra Polyclem357"
(a)Or.47.In Evergum et Mnesibulum356"
(m)Or.45, 46.In Stephanum I. et II.351"
(a)Or.59.In Neaeram349[343-0, Blass]"
(m)Or.51.On the Trierarchic Crown by Cephisodotus?)360-359"
(m)Or.43.Contra Macartatum?
(m)Or.48.In Olympiodorum.after 343"
(m)Or.44.Contra Leocharem?
(a)Or.35.Contra Lacritum341"
(a)Or.42.Contra Phaenippum?
(m)Or.32.Contra Zenothemin?
(m)Or.34.Contra Phormionem?
(m)Or.29.Contra Aphobum pro Phano
(a)Or.40.Contra Boeotum de Dote347"
(m)Or.57.Contra Eubulidem346-5"
(m)Or.33.Contra Apaturium?
(a)Or.56.In Dionysodorumnot before 322-1"

Or. 60 (ἐπιτάφιος) and Or. 61 (ἐρωτικός) are works of rhetoricians. The six epistles are also forgeries; they were used by the composer of the twelve epistles which bear the name of Aeschines. The 56 προοίμια, exordia or sketches for political speeches, are by various hands and of various dates.[5] They are valuable as being compiled from Demosthenes himself, or from other classical models.

The ancient fame of Demosthenes as an orator can be compared only with the fame of Homer as a poet. Cicero, with generous appreciation, recognizes Demosthenes as the standard of perfection. Dionysius, the closest and most penetrating of his ancient critics, exhausts the language of admiration in showing how Demosthenes united and elevated whatever had been best in earlier masters of the Greek idiom. Hermogenes, in his works Literary history of Demosthenes. on rhetoric, refers to Demosthenes as ὁ ῥήτωρ, the orator. The writer of the treatise On Sublimity knows no heights loftier than those to which Demosthenes has risen. From his own younger contemporaries, Aristotle and Theophrastus, who founded their theory of rhetoric in large part on his practice, down to the latest Byzantines, the consent of theorists, orators, antiquarians, anthologists, lexicographers, offered the same unvarying homage to Demosthenes. His work busied commentators such as Xenon, Minucian, Basilicus, Aelius, Theon, Zosimus of Gaza. Arguments to his speeches were drawn up by rhetoricians so distinguished as Numenius and Libanius. Accomplished men of letters, such as Julius Vestinus and Aelius Dionysius, selected from his writings choice passages for declamation or perusal, of which fragments are incorporated in the miscellany of Photius and the lexicons of Harpocration, Pollux and Suidas. It might have been anticipated that the purity of a text so widely read and so renowned would, from the earliest times, have been guarded with jealous care. The works of the three great dramatists had been thus protected, about 340 B.C., by a standard Attic recension. But no such good fortune befell the works of Demosthenes. Alexandrian criticism was chiefly occupied with poetry. The titular works of Demosthenes were, indeed, registered, with those of the other orators, in the catalogues (ῥητορικοὶ πίνακες) of Alexandria and Pergamum. But no thorough attempt was made to separate the authentic works from those spurious works which had even then become mingled with them. Philosophical schools which, like the Stoic, felt the ethical interest of Demosthenes, cared little for his language. The rhetoricians who imitated or analysed his style cared little for the criticism of his text. Their treatment of it had, indeed, a direct tendency to falsify it. It was customary to indicate by marks those passages which were especially useful for study or imitation. It then became a rhetorical exercise to recast, adapt or interweave such passages. Sopater, the commentator on Hermogenes, wrote on μεταβολαὶ καὶ μεταποιήσεις τῶν Δημοσθένους χωρίων, “adaptations or transcripts of passages in Demosthenes.” Such manipulation could not but lead to interpolations or confusions in the original text. Great, too, as was the attention bestowed on the thought, sentiment and style of Demosthenes, comparatively little care was bestowed on his subject-matter. He was studied more on the moral and the formal side than on the real side. An incorrect substitution of one name for another, a reading which gave an impossible date, insertions of spurious laws or decrees, were points which few readers would stop to notice. Hence it resulted that, while Plato, Thucydides and Demosthenes were the most universally popular of the classical prose-writers, the text of Demosthenes, the most widely used perhaps of all, was also the least pure. His more careful students at length made an effort to arrest the process of corruption. Editions of Demosthenes based on a critical recension, and called Ἀττικιανά (ἀντίγραφα), came to be distinguished from the vulgates, or δημώδεις ἐκδόσεις.

Among the extant manuscripts of Demosthenes—upwards of 170 in number—one is far superior, as a whole, to the rest. This is Parisinus Σ 2934, of the 10th century. A comparison Manuscripts. of this MS. with the extracts of Aelius, Aristeides and Harpocration from the Third Philippic favours the view that it is derived from an Ἀττικιανόν, whereas the δημώδεις ἐκδόσεις, used by Hermogenes and by the rhetoricians generally, have been the chief sources of our other manuscripts. The collation of this manuscript by Immanuel Bekker first placed the textual criticism of Demosthenes on a sound footing. Not only is this manuscript nearly free from interpolations, but it is the sole voucher for many excellent readings. Among the other MSS., some of the most important are—Marcianus 416 F, of the 10th (or 11th) century, the basis of the Aldine edition; Augustanus I. (N 85), derived from the last, and containing scholia to the speeches on the Crown and the Embassy, by Ulpian, with some by a younger writer, who was perhaps Moschopulus; Parisinus Υ; Antverpiensis Ω—the last two comparatively free from additions. The fullest authority on the MSS. is J. T. Vömel, Notitia codicum Demosth., and Prolegomena Critica to his edition published at Halle (1856-1857), pp. 175-178.[6]