Page:History of Greece Vol XI.djvu/458

132 HISTORY OF GREECE. act against Thebes and in defence of the Boeotian cities. This, in an Athenian envoy, argues a blindness little short of treason. The irreparable misfortune, both for Athens and for free Greece generally, was to bring Philip within Thermopylae, with power sufficient to put down Thebes and reconstitue Boeotia, even if it could have been made sure that such would be the first employment of his power. The same negotiator, who had be- gun his mission by the preposterous flourish of calling upon Philip to give up Amphipolis, ended by treacherously handing over to him a new conquest which he could not otherwise have acquired. Thermopylae, betrayed once before by Ephialtes the Malian to Xerxes, was now betrayed a second time by the Athe- nian envoys to an extra-Hellenic power yet more formidable. The ruinous peace of 346 B. c. was thus brought upon Athens not simply by mistaken impulses of her own, but also by (he cor ruption of .^Eschines and the major part of her envoys. Demos- thenes had certainly no hand in the result. He stood in decided opposition to the majority of the envoys ; a fact manifest as well from his own assurances, as from the complaints vented against him, as a colleague insupportably troublesome, by JEschines. De- mosthenes affirms, too, that after fruitless opposition to the policy of the majority, he tried to make known their misconduct to his countrymen at home both by personal return, and by letter ; and that in both cases his attempts were frustrated. Whether he did lians (whom he calls byname) were ready to appear as witnesses in his fnvor. The reason, why none of them appeared against him, appears to me suf- ficiently explained by Demosthenes. The Phokians were in a state far too prostrate and terror-stricken to incur new enmities, or to come forward as accusers of one of the Athenian partisans of Philip, whose soldiers were in possession of their country. The reason why some of them appeared in his favor is also explained by ^Eschines himself, when he states that he had pleaded for them before the Amphiktyonic assembly, and haa obtained for them a mitigation of that extreme penalty which their most violent enemies urged againsi them. To captives at the mercy of their opponents, such an interference might well appear deserving of gratitude ; quite apart from the question, how far JEschines as envoy, by his previous communications to the Athe- nian people, had contributed to betray Thermopylae and the Phokians to Philip.