The Historians' History of the World 04

The violent deaths of these illustrious orators, the disfranchisement and deportation of the Athenian demos, the suppression of the public dicasteries, the occupation of Athens by a Macedonian garrison, and of Greece generally by Macedonian Exile-Hunters—are events belonging to one and the same calamitous tragedy, and marking the extinction of the autonomous Hellenic world. Of Hyperides as a citizen we know only the general fact, that he maintained from first to last, and with oratorical ability inferior only to Demosthenes, a strenuous opposition to Macedonian dominion over Greece; though his prosecution of Demosthenes respecting the Harpalian treasure appears (so far as it comes before us) discreditable. Of Demosthenes, we know more—enough to form a judgment of him both as citizen and statesman. At the time of his death he was about sixty-two years of age, and we have before us his first Philippic, delivered thirty years before (352-351 B.C.). We are thus sure that even at that early day he took a sagacious and provident measure of the danger which threatened Grecian liberty from the energy and encroachments of Philip. He impressed upon his countrymen this coming danger, at a time when the older and more influential politicians either could not or would not see it; he called aloud upon his fellow-citizens for personal service and pecuniary contributions, enforcing the call by all the artifices of consummate oratory, when such distasteful propositions only entailed unpopularity upon himself. At the period when Demosthenes first addressed these earnest appeals to his countrymen, long before the fall of Olynthus, the power of Philip, though formidable, might have been kept perfectly well within the limits of Macedonia and Thrace; and would probably have been so kept, had Demosthenes possessed in 351 B.C. as much public influence as he had acquired ten years afterwards.

Throughout the whole career of Demosthenes as a public adviser, down to the battle of Chæronea, we trace the same combination of earnest patriotism with wise and long-sighted policy. During the three years’ war which ended with the battle of Chæronea, the Athenians in the main followed his counsel; and disastrous as were the ultimate military results of that war, for which Demosthenes could not be responsible, its earlier periods were creditable and successful, its general scheme was the best that the case admitted, and its diplomatic management universally triumphant. But what invests the purposes and policy of Demosthenes with peculiar grandeur, is, that they were not simply Athenian, but in an eminent degree Panhellenic also. It was not Athens only that he sought to defend against Philip, but the whole Hellenic world. In this he towers above the greatest of his predecessors for half a century before his birth—Pericles, Archidamus, Agesilaus, Epaminondas; whose policy was Athenian, Spartan, Theban, rather than Hellenic. He carries us back to the time of the invasion of Xerxes and the generation immediately succeeding it, when the struggles and sufferings of the Athenians against Persia were consecrated by complete identity of interest with collective Greece. The sentiments to which Demosthenes appeals throughout his numerous orations are those of the noblest and largest patriotism—trying to inflame the ancient Grecian sentiment of an autonomous Hellenic world, as the indispensable condition of a dignified and desirable existence; but inculcating at the same time that these blessings could only be preserved by toil, self-sacrifice, devotion of fortune, and willingness to brave hard and steady personal service.

Decoration, from a Vase