Demosthenes, though at the time he was mourning the death of an only daughter, showed an excessive joy by appearing in public in a white dress with a garland on his head, and performing a solemn sacrifice of thanksgiving. Could he have indulged in the dream that all was now to be reversed, and that Greece was again to be free? Macedon, no doubt, with its sudden growth of power, might have collapsed, had Philip's son and successor been an imbecile. And it appears that Demosthenes thought meanly of the young Alexander. He compared him to Margites, the hero of a comic poem which tradition attributed to Homer. Margites was a man who "knew many things, but knew them all badly;" he was a sort of "Jack of all trades and master of none." Alexander was famous for the variety of his studies and pursuits; and it was this, it may be supposed, which gave point to the comparison. Demosthenes' idea of him was, that he was a studious, bookish young man, of whom the world would never hear much. The fact that he was only twenty years of age at the time of his father's death may have reasonably encouraged Demosthenes to believe that Greece had some chance of throwing off the yoke imposed on her by her defeat at Chæroneia. He did not think it wrong to correspond with Persia, and to avail himself of Persian gold, with the view of frustrating Philip's designs on Asia. We can hardly censure him for this, when we remember that it was done for the patriotic purpose of freeing Greece from its present position of a Macedonian dependency. If he used questionable means, he at least had the merit of standing by the old cause. But, of course, it
