We often say that history is written by the victors, but it is not always true.
One of the most striking instances of the loser writing history centers around the last
great Athenian of the city’s democratic age - Demosthenes.
Living during an age in which the world order in Greece was changed forever, Demosthenes
marshaled his talents in rhetoric and genius in statesmanship to take a stand against the
king of Macedon - Philip II.
Welcome to our video on Demosthenes and his doomed last defence against Macedonian domination.
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A contemporary of the famous Aristotle, Demosthenes was born in 384 BC.
His father was wealthy and belonged to an old Athenian aristocratic house, while his
mother was a half-Scythian woman.
The elder Demosthenes spent his time amassing a considerable fortune of 15 talents which,
if some historians are to be believed, he concealed from the taxman through careful
investment and by avoiding politics.
Unfortunately for the younger Demosthenes, his thrifty patriarch passed away when he
was only seven years old.
The family fortune, rightfully his, was entrusted to the guardianship of associates who then
seized it for themselves, refusing to provide to the widow and young Demosthenes.
Because of these financial problems, the boy was only sometimes granted the high-quality
education, such as good schools and private tutors, which one of his social status would
expect.
Sometimes it is even said that his guardians even tricked these tutors out of their pay.
Demosthenes would never forget this theft.
As the growing boy became an adolescent, or ephebos, he continued to learn the arts of
rhetoric in preparation for a career in politics.
At the age of 18, Demosthenes swore his oaths and joined Athens’ Ephebic military college,
performing mandatory service in the polis’ army, which all would-be citizens had to complete.
If ancient authors such as Plutarch are to be believed, young Demosthenes’ weak constitution,
fragility, and sickliness made this part of his life unpleasant.
However, much to his credit, he emerged triumphant in 366 BC and became a citizen.
Upon returning from military service, Demosthenes immediately set about prosecuting the men
who had swindled his inheritance, primarily a relative called Aphobus.
He faced overwhelming odds against figures more knowledgeable in Athenian law than he
was, and who had more influence in society.
Nevertheless, a portion of the money was eventually recovered and Demosthenes gained valuable
experience.
In the process, it seems like the young man began to make a name for himself on the rhetorical
scene and was employed as a private speechwriter soon after.
Despite this success, during his first proper public speeches Demosthenes was mocked constantly
for a speech impediment which was probably some kind of stutter or lisp.
In order to remedy the issue, it is said that the orator recited speeches with pebbles in
his mouth as a ‘speech training’ method.
The subsequent years are a relative historical blank in Demosthenes’ life, but we can assume
that he continued to amass a fortune through his newfound profession, served in other varied
public offices, and made his first speech to the public assembly.
Always looking to a political future, he then voluntarily invested his funds in Athenian
leitourgiai [-ay]- public services for the people of Athens.
Though this seems to have been the case, by the early 350s BC the up-and-coming orator
had nevertheless amassed a large fortune.
As this was happening inside Athens, the outside world was experiencing rapid political change.
Sparta’s trouncing at the hands of Epaminondas propelled Thebes to hegemony over the Greek
world.
However, Epaminondas’ death almost a decade later ended it, paving the way for the rise
of a new power to compete with Athens.
That power was an ascendant Macedon, ruled by the formidable king Philip II.
Ever since 357BC, when the Macedonians took Amphipolis, Philip had been in the process
of gradually eroding Athens to the status of a second-rate power.
His corsairs persistently harried crucial trade routes, his adroit diplomacy detached
valuable allies, and his direct military action put him on Athens’ very doorstep3.
Demosthenes, now around thirty years of age, grew fiercely opposed to Macedonia’s imperial
ambitions.
Unwilling to allow his great city’s territory to have any further chunks sliced away without
a fight, Demosthenes delivered the so-called First Philippic - a speech against Philip
to the Athenian public assembly - at an unknown point between 352 and 349BC, using his now-considerable
skills in rhetoric to advance a revanchist political agenda.
Demosthenes initiated the speech with scathing criticism not of Philip, but of his own countrymen
in the assembly.
He shamed them for the laziness and complacency which allowed Macedon to become so powerful
in the first place, not through any special talent of the Macedonians, but through Athenian
carelessness.
He also balanced this out by addressing the feeling of helplessness in the face of Philip’s
energetic expansion, stating “Learn a lesson from the former strength of the Spartans,
which you mastered by strict attention to your affairs, and the present arrogance of
our enemy, which discomposes us because we ignore every call of duty.”
Demosthenes then proposed the establishment of a rapid-response military taskforce composed
of both citizens and mercenaries.
His speech detailed the objectives, exact composition, and operational strategy of this
anti-Macedonian contingent.
“If you hear of Philip in the Chersonese [hard ch], vote an expedition there; if at
Thermopylae, you vote one there; if somewhere else, you still keep pace with him to and
fro.”
Although he and many colleagues seemed to have put their heart and soul into this idea,
it was never carried out.
Demosthenes’ fretting about Philip ‘the barbarian’ was probably regarded as overblown
nonsense when compared to familiar threats such as Sparta or the Achaemenid Empire.
The situation grew even more severe when Philip II threatened the most prominent of Chalcidian
[hard ch and c] cities - Olynthus in 349BC.
Demosthenes warned the assembly of this dire threat in his Olynthiacs, stating “I say
that we must help the Olynthians and the best and quickest way that anyone suggests wins
my approval.”
However, when Philip II did attack Olynthus during the summer of 348, an Athenian force
dedicated to stopping the Athenian-allied city’s brutal fall and subsequent sack failed,
due to betrayal and the superior Macedonian war machine.
Always a keen diplomat, Philip reached out to Athens around this time, sending conciliatory
messages, asking for a truce and even alliance.
Demosthenes had a change of heart after Athens’ latest setback and began supporting the commencement
of peace talks with Philip.
Perhaps the Macedonian king would be a reasonable man if granted his immediate desires, Demosthenes
must have hoped.
A vote in the assembly concurred with this viewpoint after the Athenians failed to take
the famous defensive pass at Thermopylae.
In February 346 it was decided that 10 emissaries would be sent to Macedon to discuss a settlement.
One of these representatives was the middle-aged Demosthenes, youngest of the group.
Although the Macedonian king believed the Athenian embassy’s claim to Amphipolis was
illegitimate, Philip nevertheless promised to send a delegation south soon to finalise
negotiations with the assembly.
After a number of back and forths between the two sides, both concluded the Peace of
Philocrates in 346 - named after one of Demosthenes’ fellow envoys.
Although obviously still distrustful of the foreign king, who he considered barbarian,
Demosthenes seems to have been understandably doubtful about Athens’ chances of winning
any conflict with Macedon.
In defiance of the peace, the Athenians then bitterly slighted two of the Macedonian king’s
attempts to embed himself within the Greek world.
Firstly, the rowdy assembly refused to recognize Philip’s membership in the ancient Amphictyonic
League.
Then, to add insult to injury, it boycotted the panhellenic Pythian Games due to Philip’s
presiding over them.
We have no details of Demosthenes’ response to these actions at the time.
However, when the Philip sent an emissary to formally demand Athens’ approval, Demosthenes’
delivered his speech On the Peace, demonstrating just how worried he was about the prospect
of the cyclops-king’s war machine rampaging through Attica.
After outlining several prior occasions in which he had been correct, Demosthenes emphatically
advised his followers in the assembly to back down and give Philip what he wanted, however
unsatisfactory the agreement was.
[Not?]
To do so, he said, would be to give the warlord an excuse to put Athens in chains.
It was a matter in which Demosthenes was clearly on the minority side.
When another orator named Aeschines supported Philip’s demand during the same meeting,
he was widely jeered and shouted down.
Nevertheless, Athens complied with Macedonian demands shortly after, leading Philip and
his army to withdraw to the north, much to Demosthenes’ relief.
However, Philip had all the momentum, and his influence was beginning to inexorably
seep into southern Greece.
Among a few other issues the city was facing at the time4, Athens sent Demosthenes on a
diplomatic tour around southern Greece in mid-344 in an attempt to counteract Macedonian
soft-power.
Upon returning without success, he delivered the Second Philippic to Athens’ assembly,
a speech that helped Demosthenes with internal rivals as well as Philip.
It became clear to Demosthenes and to the Athenians that as the years went on, and Philip’s
influence around the Aegean grew ever more threatening, that a climactic military confrontation
for the fate of the Greek world was inevitable.
Realising that the moment to resist had come, Demosthenes embarked on a flurry of political
action, urging his own people into pre-emptive attacks to take strategic positions.
At the same time, he rushed around the Greek cities, rallying each to Athens’ banner.
By the summer of 338BC, Demosthenes had crafted the anti-Macedonian alliance into a truly
formidable force capable of resisting Philip numerically.
His efforts had brought many Euboean cities into the fold, in addition to Megara, Corinth,
Achaea, Corcyra, Leucas, and even the great former hegemon - Thebes.
In any other age, this coalition might have been the dominant force of the age, but Philip’s
Macedonian steamroller was too much even for the united Greece.
At the famous Battle of Chaeronea in summer 338, Demosthenes’ watched as his last stand
for Greek freedom collapsed before his eyes, smashed by the Philip’s phalangites and
companions.
The aftermath of Chaeronea saw Athens’ greatest speaker deliver a funeral oration for all
of those many thousands who perished in the doomed defence.
In effect, this was a funeral not only for men, but for Greek freedom.
We can only speculate as to what was going through Demosthenes’ mind at this moment
in history, but he probably didn’t imagine that the democracy of his homeland would be
lost for over two-millennia.
His grief was probably made all the more bitter due to Philip’s generous attitude.
Rather than going out in a blaze of glory, as Demosthenes no doubt believed Athens would
have to do, the Macedonian king instead released all prisoners without ransom and renewed his
alliance with the city.
The reality, however, was not lost on anyone - Athens was now a subject.
Before the ambitious designs of Greece’s new hegemon to conquer the western Achaemenid
Empire could be realised, news reached Athens which would scarcely have been believed - Philip
II really had passed away, assassinated by one of his somatophylax bodyguard as he entered
an arena in Aigai.
This momentous event was hardly a surprise to some.
Demosthenes had realised that the Macedonian king’s actions had made him a lot of enemies,
Demosthenes included, a long time before.
He had also repeatedly pointed out this fact to the assembly on a number of occasions,
stating that Philip was a hunted man.
To whatever degree this had been expected to occur at some point or other in the serpent’s
den of Pellan court politics, Demosthenes was absolutely ecstatic when it actually happened.
Macedon had been a collapsing realm before Philip’s reign brought it to the forefront
of the political world, and perhaps without him, the kingdom would revert to its previously
irrelevant state.
Tempering the joy brought about by the revelation was the fact that Demosthenes’ young daughter
had died only a week before.
Despite his state of mourning, however, Aeschines tells us that the orator was so giddy at Philip’s
death that he donned a celebratory garland and white robes, offering thanks to the gods
and setting up a shrine of devotion to the king’s killer.
This sharp turn in Athens’ favour at the very moment of its greatest defeat must have
seemed like a miracle bestowed from Zeus to his Greeks.
As one of the city’s most prominent figures, Demosthenes might have imagined a new future
in which he would be the one who would guide Athens into a new golden age, reviving the
Athenian empire of old.
If these were his hopes in the aftermath of Philip’s untimely end, they were soon to
be harshly brought down like unfortunate Icarus, whose ambitions had brought him too close
to the sun.
Buoyed by his newly found optimism, Demosthenes began loudly mustering support for another
united revolt of the free Greeks, this time against Philip’s as of yet unestablished
successor, a relatively obscure young man named Alexander.
The rebellion, which included Thebes and Athens, was a fleeting one.
In only a matter of months, the king had marched south with outstanding speed and overwhelmed
the Greeks.
The League of Corinth was reimposed.
To Demosthenes, this ‘Alexander’ was starting to look alarmingly competent.
Still, upheaval in Thrace, wider Greece and intrigue in the court at Pella appeared to
be bogging the new king down - it was still possible to break free.
Among many other problems, Alexander was forced north to campaign in the barbarous lands of
Illyria during 335BC.
During the king’s absence, rumours filtered south that he had died.
Demosthenes, likely not believing his luck, took the opportunity and once again embarked
on his fiery anti-imperial agenda by persuading the assembly to support a new rebellion in
Thebes with Athenian arms.
However when Alexander re-emerged, very much alive and very, very irritated, Athens abandoned
the Thebans to their fate.
The city was razed to the ground, most of its population were massacred and enslaved,
while a few escaped into distant exile.
Not at all ignorant of the role Athens, and in particular Demosthenes had played in denigrating
him as a tyrant and fanning the flames of revolt, Alexander demanded that the greatest
enemy of Macedon be surrendered to him.
Thanks to the intervention of another politician known as Demades, this order was rescinded
at the last moment.
Demosthenes had avoided Alexander the Great’s savage retribution by the skin of his teeth
and seems to have learned his lesson.
It was clear that any rebellion against Macedonian control was no joke, and would be mercilessly
crushed.
Realising this, Athens’ champion of democracy significantly calmed down his rhetoric, but
still retained a bitter hatred for the king.
Compared to his blistering output during Philip’s reign, after Thebes’ destruction Demosthenes
hardly did anything to rock the boat during the reign of Alexander, at least partly because
the king was far away in Asia.
When Spartan king Agis III attempted to raise Greece against Alexander’s regent Antipater
in 333BC, for example, Demosthenes was the leading voice in urging Athenian nonintervention,
arguing that it was a pointless effort and would only result in terrible reprisals.
Although the Athenians wouldn’t have liked to admit it, the peace and prosperity brought
about by Macedonian domination brought Greece as a whole into a golden age.
This brief Pax Macedonica especially benefited the Athenians, whose administration initiated
building and beautifying projects in the city.
As a cherry on top of the cake, the assembly’s usually vicious political rivalries ceased,
making governance more efficient.
A combination of this domestic tranquility and the threat of severe Macedonian punishment
is probably what urged Demosthenes into silence throughout the 320s.
He simply said nothing because there was no need to.
This period of calm during Alexander’s eastern conquests ended in 324, when his rogue imperial
treasurer - Harpalus - stole a massive amount of money, raised a considerable force of troops,
and sailed to Athens.
His attempt to lure the city to his side failed at first and he was turned away, but anger
at the Macedonian ‘god-king’s’ demand for worship and his ‘Exiles Decree’ prompted
the Athenians to allow him entry.
Still hesitant to break with the ruthless king, Demosthenes went against popular opinion
and managed to persuade his countrymen to imprison Harpalus instead.
He was later released in the hope that Alexander would rescind the Exiles Decree of free will.
The failure of this strategy finally brought an end to Demosthenes’ extensive political
career at the age of sixty.
The orator was brought to trial by his enemies for supposedly accepting a bribe from Harpalus
and, despite having no evidence against him, was found guilty.
Despite suffering the worst effects of factionalism and backbiting in Athens’ cutthroat politics,
Demosthenes seems to have still loved his city with immense patriotism.
When Alexander the Great died in summer 323, he sprang back into action, touring various
Greek cities and rousing them into action against Antipater.
The so-called ‘Lamian War’ followed, in which after a few small successes, the Greeks
were utterly crushed.
After this, the Macedonians tightened their hold over the south and snuffed out the last
vestiges of ‘freedom’ it enjoyed.
Demosthenes and his fellow Athenian partisans fled into exile upon hearing the word of the
Macedonian approach, unwilling to be dragged before Antipater.
Realising his quarry had escaped, the Macedonian regent dispatched a bounty hunter and former
actor named Archias, who was known as the ‘exile-hunter’, to kill him.
After capturing one of Macedon’s Athenian enemies and sending him to Antipater, Archias
tracked Demosthenes to a small island off the eastern Peloponnese known as Calauria,
where he had taken refuge in the temple of Poseidon.
Upon landing and approaching the shrine with a band of Thracian spearmen, the bounty hunter
attempted to convince Demosthenes into surrendering of his own free will, promising no draconian
treatment and saying friendly things.
But the champion orator saw through this ruse with ease, responding iconically: “O Archias,
thou didst never convince me by thine acting, nor wilt thou now convince me by thy promises.”
With his skills in the theatre called into question in such a manner, Archias flew into
a rage and threatened the Athenian.
All the condemned orator asked was that he be allowed to write a simple message to his
family, which was allowed.
The group went into the temple and watched Demosthenes as he began writing, placing the
writing implement in his mouth as though he was thinking what to write.
Unknown to Archias, the pen contained poison which took effect in short order.
Demosthenes collapsed and died by the altar of Poseidon, with the words: “I, O beloved
Poseidon, will depart from thy sanctuary while I am still alive, whereas Antipater and the
Macedonians would not have left even thy temple undefiled.”
The death of Demosthenes occurred at a pivotal moment in history.
The dying age of independent Greek city-states finally gave away to an era of the monarchial
rule which would last over a thousand years, beginning with the cataclysm that was the
Diadochi wars.
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