Philip's assassination inspired the Greeks with a renewed hope of recovering their independence. Our modern sentiments are inclined to be shocked at demonstrations of joy on the death of an enemy; but it is the privilege of posterity to be calm spectators of events which call forth the passions, as well as the energies of the actors in them; and we need not wonder that Demosthenes threw off for a time the burden of domestic sorrow to offer thanksgiving on the altars of the gods for the deliverance of his country. Those hopes were doomed to be speedly dissipated. Philip had left a successor who was more than able to maintain his conquests. Alexander suddenly appeared with an army ready to assert his dominion; and the Athenians were obliged to send him an embassy to sue for peace. Demosthenes was appointed one of the ambassadors; but he turned back, when he had gone half way to meet the prince, impelled either by a noble shame or a justifiable apprehension. Alexander's campaign in the north at the close of the year afforded another opportunity for revolt, of which some of the states unfortunately availed themselves. The conqueror soon returned to reconquer; and Thebes, which was foremost in the revolt, was erased from the list of Greek cities. Demosthenes, who saw that the want of prompt execution alone had interfered with the success of his warlike policy in the former reign, was naturally blind to the fact that the time for warlike policy was past. He had encouraged the Thebans, and Alexander was only deterred by the submission and entreaty of his countrymen from insisting upon his surrender. In 330 b.c., two years after the invasion of Persia, the question regarding the crown was revived; and the rival speeches, which have come down to us as masterpieces of ancient eloquence, were delivered before the Athenian people. The "De Corona" in which we admire more the noble sentiment and the high-minded confidence than the art of the speaker, is one of the most magnificent vindications in the annals of oratory. The result was a most triumphant one. Æschines failed to obtain a fifth part of the votes of the assembly, and retired in disgrace from Athens; while Demosthenes acquitted, crowned, and honoured by an overwhelming majority, attained the climax of his reputation. Five years after this his fortune was unexpectedly clouded by his alleged complicity with Harpagus, a revolted officer of Alexander, who had deserted his post at Babylon, and come to Athens to employ the treasures which had been intrusted to him in winning over the leading citizens to join in his rebellion. After some negotiations his overtures were rejected, and his wealth confiscated; but on Antipater's demanding the surrender of his person he was allowed to escape. Some of the talents he confessed to having brought with him were found wanting; and Demosthenes was charged with having shared the spoil. We have, to say the least, no evidence to prove the truth of this charge. If Demosthenes was bribed, he certainly was not bought by Harpagus, for he opposed his admission into the city and supported the proposition for his ejectment. Nevertheless, he was put on his trial before the Areopagus, found guilty, and condemned. Escaping from imprisonment, he left Attica, and dwelling for two years at Trœzen and Ægina, had a daily view of those shores, which he is said to have reproached in a moment of bitterness for nurturing three strange monsters, the owl, the snake, and the people. But if they were ungrateful for his services, the Athenians did not forget his ability; and when, at the death of Alexander, 323 b.c., a chance seemed open for a last effort to throw off the Macedonian yoke, embassies were sent out to consult with Demosthenes, and his recall from exile decreed. The modern reader cannot help comparing the triumph of his return with that which, in a later age, welcomed back Cicero to the walls of Rome. It was the glory of sunset. The Lamian war, after holding out for a time a fair prospect to the Greeks, resulted as disastrously as their other unhappy efforts. Leosthenes had fallen; the decisive battle of Cranon was fought, when Antipater marched against Athens. Demosthenes fled to Calauria; and sentence of death was passed upon him in his absence. Hunted and tracked by the traitor Archias to the temple of Poseidon, where he had taken refuge, and summoned to follow him to Antipater, he asked for a few minutes' respite to write a letter, and bit the end of a quill, in which he had concealed a deadly poison. He was found according to one account dying in the shrine; but others did not hesitate to declare, that not the "sævus exitus" of the satirist, but the god himself had silently rescued the soul of the orator from the rage of his enemies. he was entombed amid national lamentation and national honours. The misfortunes of those who betrayed him were attributed to the divine vengeance. A decree was passed that the eldest of his family should be entertained in the Prytaneum; and a brazen statue, erected over his remains, bore an inscription, expressing the feeling of his own and later generations:—"If his body had been as great as his mind, he would have saved his country."
As an orator Demosthenes stands on a pedestal of his own. His name became a synonym for eloquence among those who had to pronounce upon his fossil speech bereft of the living fire, which, in the estimate of those who beheld him with wonder "torrentem et pleni moderantem frena theatri," was its greatest element of power. His style, less terse than that of Thucydides, surpassed in subtility by that of the dialogues of Plato, was better adapted than either to impress a popular assembly. He was not less remarkable for the skill with which he ordered his arguments, the telling humour and vivacity which gave them point, than for the majesty of his more impassioned appeals. Cicero, Quintilian, Longinus—all the best critics of the ancient world—combine with the foremost poets and orators of modern times to hold him forth as an almost faultless example of excellence. If we consider the total amount and compass of his speeches, we are at a loss whether to wonder more at the industry which made him master of so wide a range of subjects, or the genius which inspired his handling of them all. As a Greek statesman he is second only to Pericles and Epaminondas, who united to equal constancy and sagacity still greater powers of action; and when we place him after these, we must recollect the happier times in which they lived. In contemplating from a distance the game of history, we are wont to exaggerate the merit of the players who win, and underestimate the greatness of those who lose. Success is elevated above the virtues; and failure degraded below the crimes. The unfairness of this view has never been so well exposed as by Demosthenes himself in his own immortal defence; the events of the first part of the struggle justified his boast, that wherever his advice prevailed his country's ruin was averted; he might well confess that he was only responsible for that over which he had control; he had no control over fortune, or the follies of his age. He did what he could to enlighten it; and even if we assume that the great results of history are for the best, and that Greece had reached the natural term of her power, we must remember that the efforts of the brave men who fail, have yet their influence on those great results, and, if undertaken from high motives, their place among the agencies for good. The great orator shared, perhaps, too largely in that infirmity which last besets noble minds, but his policy seems to have been dictated throughout by the purest patriotism. It is in view of his constancy, his devotedness, and the single eye with which he pursued the great purpose of his life, that Neibuhr has called him a saint. He was a hero in no contracted sense, and none the less a martyr, that he died faithful to a cause which had become hopeless.—J. N.
DEMOSTHENES, son of Aleisthenes, a celebrated Athenian general in the Peloponnesian war. In 426 b.c. he rashly invaded Ætolia at the head of a combined force of Athenians, Messenians, and other allies of Athens, but his army was defeated with great loss. Demosthenes sent back the survivors to Athens, and remained behind at Naupactus himself, afraid to encounter the displeasure of his countrymen. He retrieved this failure, however, by his successful defence of Naupactus against a joint attack of the Spartans and Ambraciots, over whom he gained a double victory. In the following year he sailed with the Athenian fleet, though not holding any command, and was allowed by the commanders to fortify Pylos, a rocky promontory on the Lacedæmonian coast overhanging the bay of Navarino, and to garrison it with five ships and a small land force, in order permanently to harass the Lacedæmonians. A powerful land force accompanied by a numerous fleet was speedily sent to expel the Athenians from the Spartan territory, but Demosthenes successfully resisted their most vigorous attacks until relieved by the arrival of the Athenian fleet. The Spartans who, in order to prosecute the siege, had placed a detachment on the neighbouring island of Sphacteria, were now in their turn blockaded and ultimately compelled to surrender. Shortly after Demosthenes concerted a skilful plan for surprising Megara, but it miscarried through an accident, though Nisæa, the harbour of Megara, fell into his
