embassy (commonly known as De falsa legatione), which was brought to an issue in the following year, marks the moral strength of the position now held by Demosthenes. When the gravity of the charge and the complexity of the evidence are considered, the acquittal of Aeschines by a narrow majority must be deemed his condemnation. The speech “On the Affairs of the Chersonese” and the Third Philippic were the crowning efforts of Demosthenes. Spoken in the same year, 341 B.C., and within a short space of each other, they must be taken together. The speech “On the Affairs of the Chersonese” regards the situation chiefly from an Athenian point of view. “If the peace means,” argues Demosthenes, “that Philip can seize with impunity one Athenian possession after another, but that Athenians shall not on their peril touch aught that belongs to Philip, where is the line to be drawn? We shall go to war, I am told, when it is necessary. If the necessity has not come Third Philippic.yet, when will it come?” The Third Philippic surveys a wider horizon. It ascends from the Athenian to the Hellenic view. Philip has annihilated Olynthus and the Chalcidic towns. He has ruined Phocis. He has frightened Thebes. He has divided Thessaly. Euboea and the Peloponnesus are his. His power stretches from the Adriatic to the Hellespont. Where shall be the end? Athens is the last hope of Greece. And, in this final crisis, Demosthenes was the embodied energy of Athens. It was Demosthenes who went to Byzantium, brought the estranged city back to the Athenian alliance, and snatched it from the hands of Philip. It was Demosthenes who, when Philip had already seized Elatea, hurried to Thebes, who by his passionate appeal gained one last chance, the only possible chance, for Greek freedom, who broke down the barrier of an inveterate jealousy, who brought Thebans to fight beside Athenians, and who thus won at the eleventh hour a victory for the spirit of loyal union which took away at least one bitterness from the unspeakable calamity of Chaeronea.
But the work of Demosthenes was not closed by the ruin of his cause. During the last sixteen years of his life (338–322) he rendered services to Athens not less important, and perhaps more difficult, than those which he had rendered before. He was now, as a matter of course, Municipal activity.foremost in the public affairs of Athens. In January 337, at the annual winter Festival of the Dead in the Outer Ceramicus, he spoke the funeral oration over those who had fallen at Chaeronea. He was member of a commission for strengthening the fortifications of the city (τειχοποιός). He administered the festival-fund. During a dearth which visited Athens between 330 and 326 he was charged with the organization of public relief. In 324 he was chief (ἀρχιθέωρος) of the sacred embassy to Olympia. Already, in 336, Ctesiphon had proposed that Demosthenes should receive a golden crown from the state, and that his extraordinary merits should be proclaimed in the theatre at the Great Dionysia. The proposal was adopted by the senate as a bill (προβοούλευμα); but it must be passed by the Assembly before it could become an act (ψήφισμα). To prevent this, Aeschines gave notice, in 336, that he intended to proceed against Ctesiphon for having proposed an unconstitutional measure. For six years Aeschines avoided action on this notice. At last, in 330, the patriotic party felt strong enough to force him to an issue. Aeschines spoke the speech “Against Ctesiphon,” an attack on the whole public life of Demosthenes. Demosthenes gained an overwhelming victory for himself and for the honour of Athens in the most finished, the most splendid and the most pathetic work of ancient eloquence—the immortal oration “On the Crown.”
In the winter of 325–324 Harpalus, the receiver-general of Alexander in Asia, fled to Greece, taking with him 8000 mercenaries, and treasure equivalent to about a million and a quarter sterling. On the motion of Demosthenes he was warned from the harbours of Attica. Having Affair of Harpalus.left his troops and part of his treasure at Taenarum, he again presented himself at the Peiraeus, and was now admitted. He spoke fervently of the opportunity which offered itself to those who loved the freedom of Greece. All Asia would rise with Athens to throw off the hated yoke. Fiery patriots like Hypereides were in raptures. For zeal which could be bought Harpalus had other persuasions. But Demosthenes stood firm. War with Alexander would, he saw, be madness. It could have but one result,—some indefinitely worse doom for Athens. Antipater and Olympias presently demanded the surrender of Harpalus. Demosthenes opposed this. But he reconciled the dignity with the loyalty of Athens by carrying a decree that Harpalus should be arrested, and that his treasure should be deposited in the Parthenon, to be held in trust for Alexander. Harpalus escaped from prison. The amount of the treasure, which Harpalus had stated as 700 talents, proved to be no more than 350. Demosthenes proposed that the Areopagus should inquire what had become of the other 350. Six months, spent in party intrigues, passed before the Areopagus gave in their report (ἀπόφασις). The report inculpated nine persons. Demosthenes headed the list of the accused. Hypereides was among the ten public prosecutors. Demosthenes was condemned, fined fifty talents, and, in default of payment, imprisoned. After a few days he escaped from prison to Aegina, and thence to Troezen. Two things in this obscure affair are beyond reasonable doubt. First, that Demosthenes was not bribed by Harpalus. The hatred of the Macedonian party towards Demosthenes, and the fury of those vehement patriots who cried out that he had betrayed their best opportunity, combined to procure his condemnation, with the help, probably, of some appearances which were against him. Secondly, it can hardly be questioned that, by withstanding the hot-headed patriots at this juncture, Demosthenes did heroic service to Athens.
Next year (323 B.C.) Alexander died. Then the voice of Demosthenes, calling Greece to arms, rang out like a trumpet. Early in August 322 the battle of Crannon decided the Lamian War against Greece. Antipater demanded, as the condition on which he would refrain from besieging End of Lamian War.Athens, the surrender of the leading patriots. Demades moved the decree of the Assembly by which Demosthenes, Hypereides, and some others were condemned to death as traitors. On the 20th of Boedromion (September 16) 322, a Macedonian garrison occupied Munychia. It was a day of solemn and happy memories, a day devoted, in the celebration of the Great Mysteries, to sacred joy,—the day on which the glad procession of the Initiated returned from Demosthenes condemned.Eleusis to Athens. It happened, however, to have another association, more significant than any ironical contrast for the present purpose of Antipater. It was the day on which, thirteen years before, Alexander had punished the rebellion of Thebes with annihilation.
The condemned men had fled to Aegina. Parting there from Hypereides and the rest, Demosthenes went on to Calauria, a small island off the coast of Argolis. In Calauria there was an ancient temple of Poseidon, once a centre of Minyan and Ionian worship, and surrounded with a Flight to Calauria.peculiar sanctity as having been, from time immemorial, an inviolable refuge for the pursued. Here Demosthenes sought asylum. Archias of Thurii, a man who, like Aeschines, had begun life as a tragic actor, and who was now in the pay of Antipater, soon traced the fugitive, landed in Calauria, and appeared before the temple of Poseidon with a body of Thracian spearmen. Plutarch’s picturesque narrative bears the marks of artistic elaboration. Demosthenes had dreamed the night before that he and Archias were competing for a prize as tragic actors; the house applauded Demosthenes; but his chorus was shabbily equipped, and Archias gained the prize. Archias was not the man to stick at sacrilege. In Aegina, Hypereides and the others had been taken from the shrine of Aeacus. But he hesitated to violate an asylum so peculiarly sacred as the Calaurian temple. Standing before its open door, with his Thracian soldiers around him, he endeavoured to prevail on Demosthenes to quit the holy precinct. Antipater would be certain to pardon him. Demosthenes sat silent, with his eyes fixed on the ground. At last, as the emissary persisted in his bland persuasions, he looked up and said,—“Archias, you never moved me by your acting, and you
