This page has been validated.
EARLY SPEECHES ON FOREIGN POLICY.
55

for her soldiers in other quarters, contrived to send an army into the Peloponnese; and after some indecisive engagements, a truce was concluded, which left matters as they were. Megalopolis and the Arcadian confederacy escaped the peril with which Sparta had threatened them. But the result to Athens and to Greece was unsatisfactory. Subsequently, when they apprehended a similar danger from Sparta, they did not think it worth their while to ask help from Athens. They did not care to be refused a second time, and on this occasion they applied to Philip. He was not the man to miss such an opportunity; and thus Macedonian influence was brought to bear on the affairs of the Peloponnese. This was the unfortunate consequence of the indifference of Athens to the progress of Spartan ambition. She gave the impression to the Greek world that she was not in earnest in wishing to maintain the liberties of the states of the Peloponnese, although it had been her constant profession to do so. This was the inference drawn from her refusal to ally herself with Megalopolis against Sparta. Had she been guided by the counsels of Demosthenes, she would have assumed a dignified political attitude, and, as events turned out, have put a stumbling-block in the way of her future enemy and destroyer. It is true, indeed, that at that time there was no distinct cause of apprehension from Macedon, and there is not even any allusion to Philip in this speech of Demosthenes. We may therefore conclude that as yet he himself feared nothing in that quarter. Still, it is not the less to his credit that he urged Athens to adopt a