CHAPTER VI.
FIRST SPEECH OF DEMOSTHENES AGAINST PHILIP—SPEECH FOR THE FREEDOM OF THE PEOPLE OF RHODES.
The year 352 B.C. brought with it the beginnings of great events. In that year, for the first time, the king of Macedon really showed that he might possibly be entertaining designs fraught with peril to the Greek world. He had prominently intervened in Greek politics. He had taken a conspicuous part in the Sacred or Holy War between the Thebans and Phocians. Once, indeed, he had been utterly defeated by the Phocian leader, Onomarchus, and had been driven back into his kingdom with loss and disaster, though report made him say that "he did not fly, but fell back, like the battering-ram, to give a more violent shock another time." He speedily again entered Thessaly with a more powerful army; and with the help of his allies in that country and of the admirable Thessalian cavalry, he won at Pagasæ a decisive victory over Onomarchus, who perished in the flight. Now he was completely master of Thessaly, a country which ought to have been under the control of a Greek state, and in which, of late, Theban influence had been
