The Historians' History of the World 04

From the destruction of Thebes by Alexander in 335 B.C., to the Lamian War after his death, the policy of Athens neither was nor could be conducted by Demosthenes. But condemned as he was to comparative inefficacy, he yet rendered material service to Athens, in the Harpalian affair of 324 B.C. If, instead of opposing the alliance of the city with Harpalus, he had supported it as warmly as Hyperides, the exaggerated promises of the exile might probably have prevailed, and war would have been declared against Alexander. The Lamian War was not of his original suggestion, since he was in exile at its commencement. But he threw himself into it with unreserved ardour, and was greatly instrumental in procuring the large number of adhesions with it obtained from so many Grecian states. In spite of its disastrous result, it was, like the battle of Chæronea, a glorious effort for the recovery of Grecian liberty, undertaken under circumstances which promised a fair chance of success. There was no excessive rashness in calculating on distractions in the empire left by Alexander; on mutual hostility among the principal officers and on the probability of having only to make head against Antipater and Macedonia, with little or no reinforcement from Asia. Disastrous as the enterprise ultimately proved, yet the risk was one fairly worth incurring, with so noble an object at stake; and could the war have been protracted another year, its termination would probably have been very different. We shall see this presently when we come to follow Asiatic events. After a catastrophe so ruinous, extinguishing free speech in Greece, and dispersing the Athenian demos to distant lands, Demosthenes himself could hardly have desired, at the age of sixty-two, to prolong his existence as a fugitive beyond sea.

Of the speeches which he composed for private litigants, occasionally also for himself, before the dicastery, and of the numerous stimulating and admonitory harangues on the public affairs of the moment, which he had addressed to his assembled countrymen, a few remain for the admiration of posterity. These harangues serve to us, not only as evidence of his unrivalled excellence as an orator, but as one of the chief sources from which we are enabled to appreciate the last phase of free Grecian life, as an acting and working reality.

ANTIPATER IN GREECE

[322-319 B.C.]

The death of Demosthenes, with its tragical circumstances, is on the whole less melancholy than the prolonged life of Phocion, as agent of Macedonian supremacy in a city half depopulated, where he had been born a free citizen, and which he had so long helped to administer as a free community. The dishonour of Phocion’s position must have been aggravated by the distress in Athens, arising both out of the violent deportation of one-half of its free citizens, and out of the compulsory return of the Athenian settlers from Samos—which island was now taken from Athens, after she had occupied it forty-three years, and restored to the Samian people and to their recalled exiles, by a rescript of Perdiccas in the name of Arrhidæus. Occupying this obnoxious elevation, Phocion exercised authority with his usual probity and mildness. Exerting himself to guard the citizens from being annoyed by disorders on the part of the garrison of Munychia, he kept up friendly intercourse with its commander Menyllus, though refusing all presents both from him and from Antipater.