Leosthenes, aided by some money and arms from Athens, put himself at the head of the mercenaries assembled at Tænarus, and passed across the Gulf into Ætolia. Here he was joined by the Ætolians and Akarnanians, who eagerly entered into the league with Athens for expelling the Macedonians from Greece. Proceeding onward towards Thermopylæ and Thessaly, he met with favor and encouragement almost everywhere. The cause of Grecian freedom was espoused by the Phokians, Lokrians, Dorians, Ænianes, Athamantes, and Dolopes; by most of the Malians, Œtæans, Thessalians, and Achæans of Phthiôtis; by the inhabitants of Leukas, and by some of the Molossians. Promises were also held out of co-operation from various Illyrian and Thracian tribes. In Peloponnesus, the Argeians, Sikyonians, Epidaurians, Trœzenians, Eleians, and Messenians, enrolled themselves in the league, as well as the Karystians in Eubœa.[742] These adhesions were partly procured by Hyperides and other Athenian envoys, who visited the several cities; while Pytheas and other envoys were going round in like matter to advocate the cause of Antipater. The two sides were thus publicly argued by able pleaders before different public assemblies. In these debates, the advantage was generally on the side of the Athenian orators, whose efforts moreover were powerfully seconded by the voluntary aid of Demosthenes, then living as an exile in Peloponnesus.

To Demosthenes the death of Alexander, and the new prospect of organizing an anti-Macedonian confederacy with some tolerable chance of success, came more welcome than to any one else. He gladly embraced the opportunity of joining and assisting the Athenian envoys, who felt the full value of his energetic eloquence, in the various Peloponnesian towns. So effective was the service which he thus rendered to his country, that the Athenians not only passed a vote to enable him to return, but sent a trireme to fetch him to Peiræus. Great was the joy and enthusiasm on his arrival. The archons, the priests, and the entire body of citizens, came down to the harbor to welcome his landing, and escorted him to the city. Full of impassioned emotion, Demosthenes poured forth his gratitude for having been allowed to see such a day, and to enjoy a triumph greater even than that which had been conferred on Alkibiades on returning from exile; since it had been granted spontaneously, and not extorted by force. His fine could not be remitted, consistently with Athenian custom; but the people passed a vote granting to him fifty talents as superintendent of the periodical sacrifice to Zeus Soter; and his execution of this duty was held equivalent to a liquidation of the fine.[743]

What part Demosthenes took in the plans or details of the war, we are not permitted to know. Vigorous operations were now carried on, under the military command of Leosthenes. The confederacy against Antipater included a larger assemblage of Hellenic states than that which had resisted Xerxes in 480 B. C. Nevertheless, the name of Sparta does not appear in the list. It was a melancholy drawback to the chances of Greece, in this her last struggle for emancipation, that the force of Sparta had been altogether crushed in the gallant but ill-concerted effort of Agis against Antipater seven years before, and had not since recovered. The great stronghold of Macedonian interest, in the interior of Greece, was Bœotia. Platæa, Orchomenus, and the other ancient enemies of Thebes, having received from Alexander the domain once belonging to Thebes herself, were well aware that this arrangement could only be upheld by the continued pressure of Macedonian supremacy in Greece. It seems probable also that there were Macedonian garrisons in the Kadmeia—in Corinth—and in Megalopolis; moreover, that the Arcadian and Achæan cities had been macedonized by the measures taken against them under Alexander’s orders in the preceding summer;[744] for we find no mention made of these cities in the coming contest. The Athenians equipped a considerable land-force to join Leosthenes at Thermopylæ; a citizen force of 5000 infantry and 500 cavalry, with 2000 mercenaries besides. But the resolute opposition of the Bœotian cities hindered them from advancing beyond Mount Kithæron, until Leosthenes himself, marching from Thermopylæ to join them with a part of his army, attacked the Bœotian troops, gained a complete victory, and opened the passage. He now proceeded with the full Hellenic muster, including Ætolians and Athenians, into Thessaly to meet Antipater, who was advancing from Macedonia into Greece at the head of the force immediately at his disposal—13,000 infantry, and 600 cavalry—and with a fleet of 110 ships of war co-operating on the coast.[745]

Antipater was probably not prepared for this rapid and imposing assemblage of the combined Greeks at Thermopylæ, nor for the energetic movements of Leosthenes. Still less was he prepared for the defection of the Thessalian cavalry, who, having always formed an important element in the Macedonian army, now lent their strength to the Greeks. He despatched urgent messages to the Macedonian commanders in Asia—Kraterus, Leonnatus, Philotas, etc., soliciting reinforcements; but in the mean time, though inferior in numbers, he thought it expedient to accept the challenge of Leosthenes. In the battle which ensued, however, he was completely defeated, and even cut off from the possibility of retreating into Macedonia; so that no resource was left to him except the fortified town of Lamia (near to the river Spercheius, beyond the southern border of Thessaly), where he calculated on holding out until relief came from Asia. Leosthenes immediately commenced the siege of Lamia, and pressed it with the utmost energy, making several attempts to storm the town; but its fortifications were strong, with a garrison ample and efficient—so that he was repulsed with considerable loss. Unfortunately he possessed no battering train nor engineers, such as had formed so powerful an element in the military successes of Philip and Alexander. He therefore found himself compelled to turn the siege into a blockade, and to adopt systematic measures for intercepting the supply of provisions. In this he had every chance of succeeding, and of capturing the person of Antipater. Hellenic prospects looked bright and encouraging; nothing was heard in Athens and the other cities except congratulations and thanksgivings.[746] Phokion, on hearing the confident language of those around him remarked—“The stadium (or short course) has been done brilliantly, but I fear we shall not have strength to hold out for the long course.”[747] At this critical moment, Leosthenes, in inspecting the blockading trenches, was wounded on the head by a large stone, projected from one of the catapults on the city-walls, and expired in two days.[748] A funeral oration in his honor, as well as in that of the other combatants against Antipater, was pronounced at Athens by Hyperides, on whom the people devolved that duty in preference to Demosthenes.

The death of this eminent general, in the full tide of success, was a hard blow struck by fortune at the cause of Grecian freedom. For the last generation, Athens had produced several excellent orators, and one who combined splendid oratory with wise and patriotic counsels. But during all that time, none of her citizens, before Leosthenes had displayed military genius and ardor along with Panhellenic purposes. His death appears to have saved Antipater from defeat and captivity. The difficulty was very great, of keeping together a miscellaneous army of Greeks, who after the battle, easily persuaded themselves that the war was finished, and desired to go home—perhaps under promise of returning. Even during the lifetime of Leosthenes, the Ætolians, the most powerful contingent of the army, had obtained leave to go home, from some domestic urgency, real or pretended.[749] When he was slain, there was no second in command; nor, even if there had been, could the personal influence of one officer be transferred to another. Reference was made to Athens, where, after some debate, Antiphilus was chosen commander, after the proposition to name Phokion had been made and rejected.[750] But during this interval there was no authority to direct military operations, or even to keep the army together; so that the precious moments for rendering the blockade really stringent, were lost, and Antipater was enabled to maintain himself until the arrival of Leonnatus from Asia to his aid. How dangerous the position of Antipater was, we may judge from the fact, that he solicited peace, but was required by the besiegers to surrender at discretion[751]—with which condition he refused to comply.

Antiphilus appears to have been a brave and competent officer. But before he could reduce Lamia, Leonnatus with a Macedonian army had crossed the Hellespont from Asia, and arrived at the frontiers of Thessaly. So many of the Grecian contingents had left the camp, that Antiphilus was not strong enough at once to continue the blockade and to combat the relieving army. Accordingly, he raised the blockade, and moved off by rapid marches to attack Leonnatus apart from Antipater. He accomplished this operation with vigor and success. Through the superior efficiency of the Thessalian cavalry under Menon, he gained an important advantage in a cavalry battle over Leonnatus, who was himself slain;[752] and the Macedonian phalanx having its flanks and rear thus exposed, retired from the plain to more difficult ground, leaving the Greeks masters of the field with the dead bodies. On the very next day, Antipater came up with the troops from Lamia, and took command of the defeated army. He did not however think it expedient to renew the combat, but withdrew his army from Thessaly into Macedonia, keeping in his march the high ground, out of the reach of cavalry.[753]

During the same time generally as these operations in Thessaly, it appears that war was carried on actively by sea. We hear of a descent by Mikion with a Macedonian fleet at Rhamnus on the eastern coast of Attica, repulsed by Phokion; also of a Macedonian fleet, of 240 sail, under Kleitus, engaging in two battles with the Athenian fleet under Eetion, near the islands called Echinades, at the mouth of the Achelous, on the western Ætolian coast. The Athenians were defeated in both actions, and great efforts were made at Athens to build new vessels for the purpose of filling up the losses sustained.[754] Our information is not sufficient to reveal the purposes or details of these proceedings. But it seems probable that the Macedonian fleet were attacking Ætolia through Œniadæ, the citizens of which town had recently been expelled by the Ætolians;[755] and perhaps this may have been the reason why the Ætolian contingent was withdrawn from Thessaly.

In spite of such untoward events at sea, the cause of Panhellenic liberty seemed on the whole prosperous. Though the capital opportunity had been missed, of taking Antipater captive in Lamia, still he had been expelled from Greece, and was unable, by means of his own forces in Macedonia, to regain his footing. The Grecian contingents had behaved with bravery and unanimity in prosecution of the common purpose; and what had been already achieved was quite sufficient to justify the rising, as a fair risk, promising reasonable hopes of success. Nevertheless Greek citizens were not like trained Macedonian soldiers. After a term of service not much prolonged, they wanted to go back to their families and properties, hardly less after a victory than after a defeat. Hence the army of Antiphilus in Thessaly became much thinned,[756] though still remaining large enough to keep back the Macedonian forces of Antipater, even augmented as they had been by Leonnatus—and to compel him to await the still more powerful reinforcement destined to follow under Kraterus.

In explaining the relations between these three Macedonian commanders—Antipater, Leonnatus, and Kraterus—it is necessary to go back to June 323 B. C., the period of Alexander’s death, and to review the condition into which his vast and mighty empire had fallen. I shall do this briefly, and only so far as it bears on the last struggles and final subjugation of the Grecian world.

On the unexpected death of Alexander, the camp at Babylon with its large force became a scene of discord. He left no offspring, except a child named Herakles, by his mistress Barsinê. Roxana, one of his wives, was indeed pregnant; and amidst the uncertainties of the moment, the first disposition of many was to await the birth of her child. She herself, anxious to shut out rivalry, caused Statira, the queen whom Alexander had last married to be entrapped and assassinated along with her sister.[757] There was, however, at Babylon, a brother of Alexander, named Aridæus (son of Philip by a Thessalian mistress), already of full age though feeble in intelligence, towards whom a still larger party leaned. In Macedonia, there were Olympias, Alexander’s mother—Kleopatra, his sister, widow of the Epirotic Alexander—and Kynanê,[758] another sister, widow of Amyntas (cousin of Alexander the Great, and put to death by him); all of them disposed to take advantage of their relationship to the deceased conqueror, in the scramble now opened for power.

After a violent dispute between the cavalry and the infantry at Babylon, Aridæus was proclaimed king under the name of Philip Aridæus. Perdikkas was named as his guardian and chief minister; among the other chief officers, the various satrapies and fractions of the empire were distributed. Egypt and Libya were assigned to Ptolemy; Syria to Laomedon; Kilikia to Philôtas; Pamphylia, Lykia, and the greater Phrygia, to Antigonus; Karia, to Asander; Lydia, to Menander; the Hellespontine Phrygia, to Leonnatus; Kappadokia and Paphlagonia, to the Kardian Eumenes; Media, to Pithon. The eastern satrapies were left in the hands of the actual holders.

In Europe, the distributors gave Thrace with the Chersonese to Lysimachus; the countries west of Thrace, including (along with Illyrians, Triballi, Agrianes, and Epirots) Macedonia and Greece, to Antipater and Kraterus.[759] We thus find the Grecian cities handed over to new masters, as fragments of the vast intestate estate left by Alexander. The empty form of convening and consulting a synod of deputies at Corinth, was no longer thought necessary.

All the above-named officers were considered as local lieutenants, administering portions of an empire one and indivisible, under Aridæus. The principal officers who enjoyed central authority, bearing on the entire empire, were, Perdikkas, chiliarch of the horse (the post occupied by Hephæstion until his death), a sort of vizir,[760] and Seleukus, commander of the Horse Guards. No one at this moment talked of dividing the empire. But it soon appeared that Perdikkas, profiting by the weakness of Aridæus, had determined to leave to him nothing more than the imperial name, and to engross for himself the real authority. Still, however, in his disputes with the other chiefs, he represented the imperial family, and the integrity of the empire, contending against severality and local independence. In this task (besides his brother Alketas), his ablest and most effective auxiliary was Eumenes of Kardia, secretary of Alexander for several years until his death. It was one of the earliest proceedings of Perdikkas to wrest Kappadokia from the local chief Ariarathes (who had contrived to hold it all through the reign of Alexander), and to transfer it to Eumenes, to whom it had been allotted in the general scheme of division.[761]

At the moment of Alexander’s death, Kraterus was in Kilikia, at the head of an army of veteran Macedonian soldiers. He had been directed to conduct them home into Macedonia, with orders to remain there himself in place of Antipater, who was to come over to Asia with fresh reinforcements. Kraterus had with him a paper of written instructions from Alexander, embodying projects on the most gigantic scale; for western conquest—transportation of inhabitants by wholesale from Europe into Asia and Asia into Europe—erection of magnificent religious edifices in various parts of Greece and Macedonia, etc. This list was submitted by Perdikkas to the officers and soldiers around him, who dismissed the projects as too vast for any one but Alexander to think of.[762] Kraterus and Antipater had each a concurrent claim to Greece and Macedonia, and the distributors of the empire had allotted these countries to them jointly, not venturing to exclude either. Amidst the conflicting pretensions of these great Macedonian officers, Leonnatus also cherished hopes of the same prize. He was satrap of the Asiatic territory bordering upon the Hellespont, and had received propositions from Kleopatra at Pella, inviting him to marry her and assume the government of Macedonia. About the same time, urgent messages were also sent to him (through Hekatæus despot of Kardia) from Antipater, immediately after the defeat preceding the siege of Lamia, entreating his co-operation against the Greeks. Leonnatus accordingly came, intending to assist Antipater against the Greeks, but also to dispossess him of the government of Macedonia and marry Kleopatra.[763] This scheme remained unexecuted, because (as has been already related) Leonnatus was slain in his first encounter with the Greeks. To them, his death was a grave misfortune; to Antipater, it was an advantage which more than countervailed the defeat, since it relieved him from a dangerous rival.

It was not till the ensuing summer that Kraterus found leisure to conduct his army into Macedonia. By this junction, Antipater to whom he ceded the command, found himself at the head of a powerful army—40,000 heavy infantry, 5000 cavalry, and 3000 archers and slingers. He again marched into Thessaly against the Greeks under Antiphilus; and the two armies came in sight on the Thessalian plains near Krannon. The Grecian army consisted of 25,000 infantry, and 3500 cavalry—the latter, Thessalians under Menon, of admirable efficiency. The soldiers in general were brave, but insubordinate; while the contingents of many cities had gone home without returning, in spite of urgent remonstrances from the commander. Hoping to be rejoined by these absentees, Antiphilus and Menon tried at first to defer fighting; but Antipater forced them to a battle. Though Menon with his Thessalian cavalry defeated and dispersed the Macedonian cavalry, the Grecian infantry were unable to resist the superior number of Antipater’s infantry, and the heavy pressure of the phalanx. They were beaten back and gave way, yet retiring in tolerable order, the Macedonian phalanx being incompetent for pursuit, to some difficult neighboring ground, where they were soon joined by their victorious cavalry. The loss of the Greeks is said to have been 500 men; that of the Macedonians, 120.[764]

The defeat of Krannon (August 322 B. C.) was no way decisive or ruinous, nor would it probably have crushed the spirit of Leosthenes, had he been alive and in command. The coming up of the absentee contingents might still have enabled the Greeks to make head. But Antiphilus and Menon, after holding counsel, declined to await and accelerate that junction. They thought themselves under the necessity of sending to open negotiations for peace with Antipater; who however returned for answer, that he would not recognize or treat with any Grecian confederacy, and that he would receive no propositions except from each city severally. Upon this the Grecian commanders at once resolved to continue the war, and to invoke reinforcements from their countrymen. But their own manifestation of timidity had destroyed the chance that remained of such reinforcements arriving. While Antipater commenced a vigorous and successful course of action against the Thessalian cities separately, the Greeks became more and more dispirited and alarmed. City after city sent its envoys to entreat peace from Antipater, who granted lenient terms to each, reserving only the Athenians and Ætolians. In a few days, the combined Grecian army was dispersed; Antiphilus with the Athenians returned into Attica; Antipater followed them southward as far as Bœotia, taking up his quarters at the Macedonian post on the Kadmeia, once the Hellenic Thebes—within two days’ march of Athens.[765]

Against the overwhelming force thus on the frontiers of Attica, the Athenians had no means of defence. The principal anti-Macedonian orators, especially Demosthenes and Hyperides, retired from the city at once, seeking sanctuary in the temples of Kalauria and Ægina. Phokion and Demades, as the envoys most acceptable to Antipater, were sent to Kadmeia as bearers of the submission of the city, and petitioners for lenient terms. Demades is said to have been at this time disfranchised and disqualified from public speaking—having been indicted and found guilty thrice (some say seven times) under the Graphê Paranomon; but the Athenians passed a special vote of relief, to enable him to resume his functions of citizen. Neither Phokion nor Demades, however, could prevail upon Antipater to acquiesce in anything short of the surrender of Athens at discretion; the same terms as Leosthenes had required from Antipater himself at Lamia. Kraterus was even bent upon marching forward into Attica, to dictate terms under the walls of Athens; and it was not without difficulty that Phokion obtained the abandonment of this intention; after which he returned to Athens with the answer. The people had no choice except to throw themselves on the mercy of Antipater;[766] and Phokion and Demades came back to Thebes to learn his determination. This time they were accompanied by the philosopher Xenokrates—the successor of Plato and Speusippus, as presiding teacher in the school of the Academy. Though not a citizen of Athens, Xenokrates had long resided there; and it was supposed that his dignified character and intellectual eminence might be efficacious in mitigating the wrath of the conqueror. Aristotle had quitted Athens for Chalkis before this time; otherwise he, the personal friend of Antipater, would have been probably selected for this painful mission. In point of fact, Xenokrates did no good, being harshly received, and almost put to silence by Antipater. One reason of this may be, that he had been to a certain extent the rival of Aristotle; and it must be added to his honor, that he maintained a higher and more independent tone than either of the other envoys.[767]

According to the terms dictated by Antipater, the Athenians were required to pay a sum equal to the whole cost of the war; to surrender Demosthenes, Hyperides, and seemingly at least two other anti-Macedonian orators; to receive a Macedonian garrison in Munychia; to abandon their democratical constitution and disfranchise all their poorer citizens. Most of these poor men were to be transported from their homes, and to receive new lands on a foreign shore. The Athenian colonists in Samos were to be dipossessed and the island retransferred to the Samian exiles and natives.

It is said that Phokion and Demades heard these terms with satisfaction, as lenient and reasonable. Xenokrates entered against them the strongest protest which the occasion admitted, when he said[768]—“If Antipater looks upon us as slaves, the terms are moderate; if as freemen, they are severe.” To Phokion’s entreaty, that the introduction of the garrison might be dispensed with, Antipater replied in the negative, intimating that the garrison would be not less serviceable to Phokion himself than to the Macedonians; while Kallimedon also, an Athenian exile there present, repelled the proposition with scorn. Respecting the island of Samos, Antipater was prevailed upon to allow a special reference to the imperial authority.

If Phokion thought these terms lenient, we must imagine that he expected a sentence of destruction against Athens, such as Alexander had pronounced and executed against Thebes. Under no other comparison can they appear lenient. Out of 21,000 qualified citizens of Athens, all those who did not possess property to the amount of 2000 drachmæ were condemned to disfranchisement and deportation. The number below this prescribed qualification, who came under the penalty, was 12,000, or three-fifths of the whole. They were set aside as turbulent, noisy democrats; the 9000 richest citizens, the “party of order”, were left in exclusive possession, not only of the citizenship, but of the city. The condemned 12,000 were deported out of Attica, some to Thrace, some to the Illyrian or Italian coast, some to Libya or the Kyrenaic territory. Besides the multitude banished simply on the score of comparative poverty, the marked anti-Macedonian politicians were banished also, including Agnonides, the friend of Demosthenes, and one of his earnest advocates when accused respecting the Harpalian treasures.[769] At the request of Phokion, Antipater consented to render the deportation less sweeping than he had originally intended, so far as to permit some exiles, Agnonides among the rest, to remain within the limits of Peloponnesus.[770] We shall see him presently contemplating a still more wholesale deportation of the Ætolian people.

It is deeply to be lamented that this important revolution, not only cutting down Athens to less than one-half of her citizen population, but involving a deportation fraught with individual hardship and suffering, is communicated to us only in two or three sentences of Plutarch and Diodorus, without any details from contemporary observers. It is called by Diodorus a return to the Solonian constitution; but the comparison disgraces the name of that admirable lawgiver, whose changes, taken as a whole, were prodigiously liberal and enfranchising, compared with what he found established. The deportation ordained by Antipater must indeed have brought upon the poor citizens of Athens a state of suffering in foreign lands analogous to that which Solon describes as having preceded his Seisachtheia, or measure for the relief of debtors.[771] What rules the nine thousand remaining citizens adopted for their new constitution, we do not know. Whatever they did, must now have been subject to the consent of Antipater and the Macedonian garrison, which entered Munychia, under the command of Menyllus, on the twentieth day of the month Boedromion (September), rather more than a month after the battle of Krannon. The day of its entry presented a sorrowful contrast. It was the day on which, during the annual ceremony of the mysteries of Eleusinian Demeter, the multitudinous festal procession of citizens escorted the god Iacchus from Athens to Eleusis.[772]

One of the earliest measures of the nine thousand was, to condemn to death, at the motion of Demades, the distinguished anti-Macedonian orators who had already fled—Demosthenes, Hyperides, Aristonikus, and Himeræus, brother of the citizen afterwards celebrated as Demetrius the Phalerean. The three last having taken refuge in Ægina, and Demosthenes in Kalauria, all of them were out of the reach of an Athenian sentence, but not beyond that of the Macedonian sword. At this miserable season, Greece was full of similar exiles, the anti-Macedonian leaders out of all the cities which had taken part in the Lamian war. The officers of Antipater, called in the language of the time the Exile-Hunters,[773] were everywhere on the look-out to seize these proscribed men; many of the orators, from other cities as well as from Athens, were slain; and there was no refuge except the mountains of Ætolia for any of them.[774] One of these officers, a Thurian named Archias, who had once been a tragic actor, passed over with a company of Thracian soldiers to Ægina, where he seized the three Athenian orators—Hyperides, Aristonikus, and Himeræus—dragging them out of the sanctuary of the Æakeion or chapel of Æakus. They were all sent as prisoners to Antipater, who had by this time marched forward with his army to Corinth and Kleonæ in Peloponnesus. All were there put to death, by his order. It is even said, and on respectable authority, that the tongue of Hyperides was cut out before he was slain; according to another statement, he himself bit it out—being put to the torture, and resolving to make revelation of secrets impossible. Respecting the details of his death, there were several different stories.[775]

Having conducted these prisoners to Antipater, Archias proceeded with his Thracians to Kalauria in search of Demosthenes. The temple of Poseidon there situated, in which the orator had taken sanctuary, was held in such high veneration, that Archias, hesitating to drag him out by force, tried to persuade him to come forth voluntarily, under promise that he should suffer no harm. But Demosthenes, well aware of the fate which awaited him, swallowed poison in the temple, and when the dose was beginning to take effect, came out of the sacred ground, expiring immediately after he had passed the boundary. The accompanying circumstances were recounted in several different ways.[776] Eratosthenes (to whose authority I lean) affirmed that Demosthenes carried the poison in a ring round his arm; others said that it was suspended in a linen bag round his neck; according to a third story, it was contained in a writing-quill, which he was seen to bite and suck, while composing a last letter to Antipater. Amidst these contradictory details, we can only affirm as certain, that the poison which he had provided beforehand preserved him from the sword of Antipater, and perhaps from having his tongue cut out. The most remarkable assertion was that of Demochares, nephew of Demosthenes, made in his harangues at Athens a few years afterwards. Demochares asserted that his uncle had not taken poison, but had been softly withdrawn from the world by a special providence of the gods, just at the moment essential to rescue him from the cruelty of the Macedonians. It is not less to be noted, as an illustration of the vein of sentiment afterwards prevalent, that Archias the Exile-Hunter was affirmed to have perished in the utmost dishonor and wretchedness.[777]

The violent deaths of these illustrious orators, the disfranchisement and deportation of the Athenian Demos, the suppression of the public Dikasteries, 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 (as 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, in 341 B. C.

Throughout the whole career of Demosthenes as a public adviser, down to the battle of Chæroneia, 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 Chæroneia, 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—Perikles, 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[778]—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.

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. In respect to the charge of having been corrupted by Harpalus, I have already shown reasons for believing him innocent. The Lamian war, the closing scene of his activity, was not of his original suggestion, since he was in exile at its commencement. But he threw himself into it with unreserved ardor, and was greatly instrumental in procuring the large number of adhesions which it obtained from so many Grecian states. In spite of its disastrous result, it was, like the battle of Chæroneia, 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 Dikastery—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.