from the past, it was an interference which ultimately meant mischief. Demosthenes succeeded in bringing the Athenians to this point of view. He induced them to send an embassy, himself being at the head of it, into the Peloponnese, the express object of which was to defeat Philip's diplomacy. He visited several of the cities, and addressed warnings to them based on the bad faith of Philip generally, and on his treatment of Olynthus particularly. He told them plainly that in their fear and hatred of Sparta they were allowing themselves to become his accomplices in enslaving and ruining Greece. It seems that one of the chief arguments on which he insisted was the utter impossibility of a sincere and hearty union between free states and a despot. This would be sure to impress the democratic party—always a powerful element in a Greek state. He was heard—so he tells us himself in one of his subsequent speeches—with approbation and applause, but he failed to convince. There were, as he says in another speech, those in every state who were willing to be controlled by a foreign power, if only they could get the upper hand of their fellow-citizens. The old love of freedom and of legal government, which had been the great glory of Greece, seemed to be on the wane. Still Demosthenes accomplished something. Philip thought it necessary to send envoys to Athens with some sort of apology for himself and his general policy; and an embassy also came, perhaps at his suggestion, from some of the states of the Peloponnese. Athens was in a perplexing position. Philip could plausibly say that the Athenians were unreasonably
