Page:Philological Museum v2.djvu/419

On the Birth-Year of Demosthenes. 409 recent, though according to Wolf they really happened four years before, whereas Mr Clinton thinks it may be proved that two years only had elapsed between the commission of the offence complained of in the speech and its composition, and accordingly that Demosthenes was thirty-two (that is in his thirty-second year) in the archonship of Thessalus, 01. 107. 2, which agrees with the date of Gellius and Libanius for his birth. The first point to be ascertained is, at what time the facts which are the subject of the oration occurred, the next, when it was composed and to which date the orator'^s account of his age is to be referred. Beside the allusion to an expe- dition to Olynthus, the oration mentions one to Euboea, the events of which are of some celebrity, though its precise date has been hitherto a subject of dispute. It was that in which Phocion commanded, and defeated the tyrant Plutarchus at Tamynae, and it occurred at the same time with the occasion of the prosecution of Midias (p. 56l). The critics who pre- ceded Mr Clinton, including Boeckh, had fixed their atten- tion on a passage of Dionysius, in which it was evident that he had spoken of this engagement, and had mentioned its date, but that his words had been mutilated by his tran- scribers. In this passage (Dinarch. p. 665)^ according to the corrupt reading, he is made to ground an argument concerning the date of an oration (Demosth. irpo^ Botwroi/ Trepl Tov ovdfxaTo^) on an allusion contained in it to a recent expedition ei^ IliyXa?, and to state that this expedition took place eTri Qovjui]Sov apxovro^. The oration itself (p. 999) left no doubt that for YlvXm we ought to read Tafivva^^ and this correction had been proposed by Corsini. But as to the name of the archon, Demosthenes gives no light, and Corsini thought himself at liberty to conjecture QeoipiXov^ which would bring the action down to 01. 108. 1. Wolf and Boeckh also adopted this conjecture: while Weiske (De Hyperbole errorum in Historia Philippi A. F. commissorum genitrice III. p. 37) proposes to read EvSf]juiov, and to date the action 01. 106. 4. But all these learned writers overlooked another passage of Dionysius, in which he records the date of the oration irepl tov 6v6ixaTo%, and consequently of the expedition to Tamynae (p. 656, o yap AfjfwaOevovs -Trepl rod ovoixaro^