Page:History of Greece Vol XI.djvu/449

ALARM AT ATHENS. 42J At the moment when he arrived, the people were holdi.^ an assembly in the Peiraeus, on matters connected with the docks and arsenal ; and to this assembly, actually sitting, Derkyllus made his unexpected report. 1 The shock to the public of Athens was prodigious. Not only were all their splendid anticipations of anti- Theban policy from Philip (hitherto believed and welcomed by the people on the positive assurances of Philokrates and .ZEschines) now dashed to the ground not only were the Athenians smitten with the consciousness that they had been overreached by Philip, that they had played into the hands of their enemies the Thebans, and that they had betrayed their allies the Phokians to ruin but they felt also that they had yielded up Thermopylae, the de- fence at once of Attica and of Greece, and that the road to Athens lay open to their worst enemies the Thebans, now aided by Mace- donian force. Under this pressure of surprise, sorrow, and terror, the Athenians, on the motion of Kallisthenes, passed these votes : To put the Peiraeus, as well as the fortresses throughout Attica, in immediate defence To bring within these walls, for safety, all the women and children, and all the movable property, now spread abroad in Attica To celebrate the approaching festival of the Herakleia, not in the country, as was usual, but in the inte rior of Athens. 9 Such were the significant votes, the like of which had not been passed at Athens since the Peloponnesian war, attesting the ter- rible reaction of feeling occasioned at Athens by the disastrous 1 Demosthen. Fals. Leg. p. 359, 360, 365, 379. 2 Demosthen. Fals. Leg. p. 368-379. ^Eschines also acknowledges the passing of this vote, for bringing in the movable property of Athens into a place of safety; though he naturally says very little about it (Fals. Leg. p. 46. c. 42). In the oration of Demosthenes, De CoronA, p. 238, this decree, moved by Kallisthenes, is not only alluded to, but purports to be given verbatim. The date as we there read it the 21st of the month Maemakterion is un- questionably wrong ; for the real decree must have been passed in the con eluding days of the month Skirrophorion, immediately after hearing the report of Derkyllus. This manifest error of date will not permit us to believe in the authenticity of the document. Of these supposed original documents, inserted in the oration De Coronii, Droysen and other critics have shown some to be decidedly spurious ; and all are so doubtful that I lurhear to cite them as authority