Chapter XCV (3)

It was not till the ensuing summer that Kraterus found leisure to conduct his army into Macedonia. By this junction, Antipater to whom he ceded the command, found himself at the head of a powerful army—40,000 heavy infantry, 5000 cavalry, and 3000 archers and slingers. He again marched into Thessaly against the Greeks under Antiphilus; and the two armies came in sight on the Thessalian plains near Krannon. The Grecian army consisted of 25,000 infantry, and 3500 cavalry—the latter, Thessalians under Menon, of admirable efficiency. The soldiers in general were brave, but insubordinate; while the contingents of many cities had gone home without returning, in spite of urgent remonstrances from the commander. Hoping to be rejoined by these absentees, Antiphilus and Menon tried at first to defer fighting; but Antipater forced them to a battle. Though Menon with his Thessalian cavalry defeated and dispersed the Macedonian cavalry, the Grecian infantry were unable to resist the superior number of Antipater’s infantry, and the heavy pressure of the phalanx. They were beaten back and gave way, yet retiring in tolerable order, the Macedonian phalanx being incompetent for pursuit, to some difficult neighboring ground, where they were soon joined by their victorious cavalry. The loss of the Greeks is said to have been 500 men; that of the Macedonians, 120.[764]

[764] Diodor. xviii. 17; Plutarch, Phokion, 26.

The defeat of Krannon (August 322 B. C.) was no way decisive or ruinous, nor would it probably have crushed the spirit of Leosthenes, had he been alive and in command. The coming up of the absentee contingents might still have enabled the Greeks to make head. But Antiphilus and Menon, after holding counsel, declined to await and accelerate that junction. They thought themselves under the necessity of sending to open negotiations for peace with Antipater; who however returned for answer, that he would not recognize or treat with any Grecian confederacy, and that he would receive no propositions except from each city severally. Upon this the Grecian commanders at once resolved to continue the war, and to invoke reinforcements from their countrymen. But their own manifestation of timidity had destroyed the chance that remained of such reinforcements arriving. While Antipater commenced a vigorous and successful course of action against the Thessalian cities separately, the Greeks became more and more dispirited and alarmed. City after city sent its envoys to entreat peace from Antipater, who granted lenient terms to each, reserving only the Athenians and Ætolians. In a few days, the combined Grecian army was dispersed; Antiphilus with the Athenians returned into Attica; Antipater followed them southward as far as Bœotia, taking up his quarters at the Macedonian post on the Kadmeia, once the Hellenic Thebes—within two days’ march of Athens.[765]

[765] Diodor. xviii. 17; Plutarch, Phokion, c. 26.

Against the overwhelming force thus on the frontiers of Attica, the Athenians had no means of defence. The principal anti-Macedonian orators, especially Demosthenes and Hyperides, retired from the city at once, seeking sanctuary in the temples of Kalauria and Ægina. Phokion and Demades, as the envoys most acceptable to Antipater, were sent to Kadmeia as bearers of the submission of the city, and petitioners for lenient terms. Demades is said to have been at this time disfranchised and disqualified from public speaking—having been indicted and found guilty thrice (some say seven times) under the Graphê Paranomon; but the Athenians passed a special vote of relief, to enable him to resume his functions of citizen. Neither Phokion nor Demades, however, could prevail upon Antipater to acquiesce in anything short of the surrender of Athens at discretion; the same terms as Leosthenes had required from Antipater himself at Lamia. Kraterus was even bent upon marching forward into Attica, to dictate terms under the walls of Athens; and it was not without difficulty that Phokion obtained the abandonment of this intention; after which he returned to Athens with the answer. The people had no choice except to throw themselves on the mercy of Antipater;[766] and Phokion and Demades came back to Thebes to learn his determination. This time they were accompanied by the philosopher Xenokrates—the successor of Plato and Speusippus, as presiding teacher in the school of the Academy. Though not a citizen of Athens, Xenokrates had long resided there; and it was supposed that his dignified character and intellectual eminence might be efficacious in mitigating the wrath of the conqueror. Aristotle had quitted Athens for Chalkis before this time; otherwise he, the personal friend of Antipater, would have been probably selected for this painful mission. In point of fact, Xenokrates did no good, being harshly received, and almost put to silence by Antipater. One reason of this may be, that he had been to a certain extent the rival of Aristotle; and it must be added to his honor, that he maintained a higher and more independent tone than either of the other envoys.[767]

[766] Demochares, the nephew of Demosthenes, who had held a bold
language and taken active part against Antipater throughout
the Lamian war, is said to have delivered a public harangue
recommending resistance even at this last moment. At least such
was the story connected with his statue, erected a few years
afterwards at Athens, representing him in the costume of an
orator, but with a sword in hand—Plutarch, Vit. X. Oratt. p. 847:
compare Polybius, xii. 13.

[767] Plutarch, Phokion, 27; Diodor. xviii. 18.

According to the terms dictated by Antipater, the Athenians were required to pay a sum equal to the whole cost of the war; to surrender Demosthenes, Hyperides, and seemingly at least two other anti-Macedonian orators; to receive a Macedonian garrison in Munychia; to abandon their democratical constitution and disfranchise all their poorer citizens. Most of these poor men were to be transported from their homes, and to receive new lands on a foreign shore. The Athenian colonists in Samos were to be dipossessed and the island retransferred to the Samian exiles and natives.

It is said that Phokion and Demades heard these terms with satisfaction, as lenient and reasonable. Xenokrates entered against them the strongest protest which the occasion admitted, when he said[768]—“If Antipater looks upon us as slaves, the terms are moderate; if as freemen, they are severe.” To Phokion’s entreaty, that the introduction of the garrison might be dispensed with, Antipater replied in the negative, intimating that the garrison would be not less serviceable to Phokion himself than to the Macedonians; while Kallimedon also, an Athenian exile there present, repelled the proposition with scorn. Respecting the island of Samos, Antipater was prevailed upon to allow a special reference to the imperial authority.

[768] Plutarch, Phokion, 27. Οἱ μὲν οὖν ἄλλοι πρέσβεις ἠγάπησαν
ὡς φιλανθρώπους τὰς διαλύσεις, πλὴν τοῦ Ξενοκράτους, etc.
Pausanias even states (vii. 10, 1) that Antipater was disposed
to grant more lenient terms, but was dissuaded from doing so by
Demades.

If Phokion thought these terms lenient, we must imagine that he expected a sentence of destruction against Athens, such as Alexander had pronounced and executed against Thebes. Under no other comparison can they appear lenient. Out of 21,000 qualified citizens of Athens, all those who did not possess property to the amount of 2000 drachmæ were condemned to disfranchisement and deportation. The number below this prescribed qualification, who came under the penalty, was 12,000, or three-fifths of the whole. They were set aside as turbulent, noisy democrats; the 9000 richest citizens, the “party of order”, were left in exclusive possession, not only of the citizenship, but of the city. The condemned 12,000 were deported out of Attica, some to Thrace, some to the Illyrian or Italian coast, some to Libya or the Kyrenaic territory. Besides the multitude banished simply on the score of comparative poverty, the marked anti-Macedonian politicians were banished also, including Agnonides, the friend of Demosthenes, and one of his earnest advocates when accused respecting the Harpalian treasures.[769] At the request of Phokion, Antipater consented to render the deportation less sweeping than he had originally intended, so far as to permit some exiles, Agnonides among the rest, to remain within the limits of Peloponnesus.[770] We shall see him presently contemplating a still more wholesale deportation of the Ætolian people.

[769] See Fragments of Hyperides adv. Demosth. p. 61-65, ed.
Babington.

[770] Diodor. xviii. 18. οὗτοι μὲν οὖν ὄντες πλείους τῶν μυρίων
(instead of δισμυρίων, which seems a mistake) καὶ δισχιλίων
μετεστάθησαν ἐκ τῆς πατρίδος· οἱ δὲ τὴν ὡρισμένην τίμησιν ἔχοντες
περὶ ἐννακισχιλίους, ἀπεδείχθησαν κύριοι τῆς τε πόλεως καὶ τῆς
χώρας, καὶ κατὰ τοὺς Σόλωνος νόμους ἐπολιτεύοντο. Plutarch states
the disfranchised as above 12,000.

Plutarch, Phokion, 28, 29. Ὅμως δ᾽ οὖν ὁ Φωκίων καὶ φυγῆς
ἀπήλλαξε πολλοὺς δεηθεὶς τοῦ Ἀντιπάτρου· καὶ φεύγουσι διεπράξατο,
μὴ καθάπερ οἱ λοιποὶ τῶν μεθισταμένων ὑπὲρ τὰ Κεραύνια ὄρη καὶ
τὸν Ταίναρον ἐκπεσεῖν τῆς Ἑλλάδος, ἀλλ᾽ ἐν Πελοποννήσῳ κατοικεῖν,
ὧν ἦν καὶ Ἁγνωνίδης ὁ συκοφάντης.

Diodorus and Plutarch (c. 29) mention that Antipater assigned
residences in Thrace for the expatriated. Those who went beyond
the Keraunian mountains must have gone either to the Illyrian
coast, Apollonia or Epidamnus—or to the Gulf of Tarentum. Those
who went beyond Tænarus would probably be sent to Libya: see
Thucydides, vii. 19, 10; vii. 50, 2.

It is deeply to be lamented that this important revolution, not only cutting down Athens to less than one-half of her citizen population, but involving a deportation fraught with individual hardship and suffering, is communicated to us only in two or three sentences of Plutarch and Diodorus, without any details from contemporary observers. It is called by Diodorus a return to the Solonian constitution; but the comparison disgraces the name of that admirable lawgiver, whose changes, taken as a whole, were prodigiously liberal and enfranchising, compared with what he found established. The deportation ordained by Antipater must indeed have brought upon the poor citizens of Athens a state of suffering in foreign lands analogous to that which Solon describes as having preceded his Seisachtheia, or measure for the relief of debtors.[771] What rules the nine thousand remaining citizens adopted for their new constitution, we do not know. Whatever they did, must now have been subject to the consent of Antipater and the Macedonian garrison, which entered Munychia, under the command of Menyllus, on the twentieth day of the month Boedromion (September), rather more than a month after the battle of Krannon. The day of its entry presented a sorrowful contrast. It was the day on which, during the annual ceremony of the mysteries of Eleusinian Demeter, the multitudinous festal procession of citizens escorted the god Iacchus from Athens to Eleusis.[772]

[771] Plutarch, Phokion, 28. ἐκπεπολιορκημένοις ἐῴκεσαν: compare
Solon, Fragment 28, ed. Gaisford.

[772] Plutarch, Phokion, 28.

One of the earliest measures of the nine thousand was, to condemn to death, at the motion of Demades, the distinguished anti-Macedonian orators who had already fled—Demosthenes, Hyperides, Aristonikus, and Himeræus, brother of the citizen afterwards celebrated as Demetrius the Phalerean. The three last having taken refuge in Ægina, and Demosthenes in Kalauria, all of them were out of the reach of an Athenian sentence, but not beyond that of the Macedonian sword. At this miserable season, Greece was full of similar exiles, the anti-Macedonian leaders out of all the cities which had taken part in the Lamian war. The officers of Antipater, called in the language of the time the Exile-Hunters,[773] were everywhere on the look-out to seize these proscribed men; many of the orators, from other cities as well as from Athens, were slain; and there was no refuge except the mountains of Ætolia for any of them.[774] One of these officers, a Thurian named Archias, who had once been a tragic actor, passed over with a company of Thracian soldiers to Ægina, where he seized the three Athenian orators—Hyperides, Aristonikus, and Himeræus—dragging them out of the sanctuary of the Æakeion or chapel of Æakus. They were all sent as prisoners to Antipater, who had by this time marched forward with his army to Corinth and Kleonæ in Peloponnesus. All were there put to death, by his order. It is even said, and on respectable authority, that the tongue of Hyperides was cut out before he was slain; according to another statement, he himself bit it out—being put to the torture, and resolving to make revelation of secrets impossible. Respecting the details of his death, there were several different stories.[775]

[773] Plutarch, Demosth. 28. Ἀρχίας ὁ κληθεὶς Φυγαδοθήρας.
Plutarch, Vit. X. Oratt. p. 846.

[774] Polybius, ix. 29, 30. This is stated, as matter of
traditional pride, by an Ætolian speaker more than a century
afterwards. In the speech of his Akarnanian opponent, there is
nothing to contradict it—while the fact is in itself highly
probable.

See Westermann, Geschichte der Beredtsamkeit in Griechenland, ch.
71, note 4.

[775] Plutarch, Demosth. 28; Plutarch, Vit. X. Oratt. p. 849;
Photius, p. 496.

Having conducted these prisoners to Antipater, Archias proceeded with his Thracians to Kalauria in search of Demosthenes. The temple of Poseidon there situated, in which the orator had taken sanctuary, was held in such high veneration, that Archias, hesitating to drag him out by force, tried to persuade him to come forth voluntarily, under promise that he should suffer no harm. But Demosthenes, well aware of the fate which awaited him, swallowed poison in the temple, and when the dose was beginning to take effect, came out of the sacred ground, expiring immediately after he had passed the boundary. The accompanying circumstances were recounted in several different ways.[776] Eratosthenes (to whose authority I lean) affirmed that Demosthenes carried the poison in a ring round his arm; others said that it was suspended in a linen bag round his neck; according to a third story, it was contained in a writing-quill, which he was seen to bite and suck, while composing a last letter to Antipater. Amidst these contradictory details, we can only affirm as certain, that the poison which he had provided beforehand preserved him from the sword of Antipater, and perhaps from having his tongue cut out. The most remarkable assertion was that of Demochares, nephew of Demosthenes, made in his harangues at Athens a few years afterwards. Demochares asserted that his uncle had not taken poison, but had been softly withdrawn from the world by a special providence of the gods, just at the moment essential to rescue him from the cruelty of the Macedonians. It is not less to be noted, as an illustration of the vein of sentiment afterwards prevalent, that Archias the Exile-Hunter was affirmed to have perished in the utmost dishonor and wretchedness.[777]

[776] Plutarch, Demosth. 30. τῶν δ᾽ ἄλλων, ὅσοι γεγράφασί τι
περὶ αὐτοῦ, ~παμπολλοὶ δ᾽ εἰσὶ~, τὰς διαφορὰς οὐκ ἀναγκαῖον
ἐπεξελθεῖν, etc.

The taunts on Archias’s profession, as an actor, and as an
indifferent actor, which Plutarch puts into the mouth of
Demosthenes (c. 29), appear to me not worthy either of the
man or of the occasion; nor are they sufficiently avouched to
induce me to transcribe them. Whatever bitterness of spirit
Demosthenes might choose to manifest, at such a moment, would
surely be vented on the chief enemy, Antipater; not upon the mere
instrument.

[777] Plutarch, Demosth. 30; Plutarch, Vit. X. Oratt. p. 846;
Photius, p. 494; Arrian, De Rebus post Alexand. vi. ap. Photium,
Cod. 92.

The violent deaths of these illustrious orators, the disfranchisement and deportation of the Athenian Demos, the suppression of the public Dikasteries, the occupation of Athens by a Macedonian garrison, and of Greece generally by Macedonian Exile-Hunters—are events belonging to one and the same calamitous tragedy, and marking the extinction of the autonomous hellenic world. Of Hyperides as a citizen we know only the general fact, that he maintained from first to last, and with oratorical ability inferior only to Demosthenes, a strenuous opposition to Macedonian dominion over Greece; though his prosecution of Demosthenes respecting the Harpalian treasure appears (as far as it comes before us) discreditable. Of Demosthenes we know more—enough to form a judgment of him both as citizen and statesman. At the time of his death he was about sixty-two years of age, and we have before us his first Philippic, delivered thirty years before (352-351 B. C.). We are thus sure, that even at that early day, he took a sagacious and provident measure of the danger which threatened Grecian liberty from the energy and encroachments of Philip. He impressed upon his countrymen this coming danger, at a time when the older and more influential politicians either could not or would not see it; he called aloud upon his fellow-citizens for personal service and pecuniary contributions, enforcing the call by all the artifices of consummate oratory, when such distasteful propositions only entailed unpopularity upon himself. At the period when Demosthenes first addressed these earnest appeals to his countrymen, long before the fall of Olynthus, the power of Philip, though formidable, might have been kept perfectly well within the limits of Macedonia and Thrace; and would probably have been so kept, had Demosthenes possessed in 351 B. C. as much public influence as he had acquired ten years afterwards, in 341 B. C.

Throughout the whole career of Demosthenes as a public adviser, down to the battle of Chæroneia, we trace the same combination of earnest patriotism with wise and long-sighted policy. During the three years’ war which ended with the battle of Chæroneia, the Athenians in the main followed his counsel; and disastrous as were the ultimate military results of that war, for which Demosthenes could not be responsible—its earlier periods were creditable and successful, its general scheme was the best that the case admitted, and its diplomatic management universally triumphant. But what invests the purposes and policy of Demosthenes with peculiar grandeur, is, that they were not simply Athenian, but in an eminent degree Panhellenic also. It was not Athens only that he sought to defend against Philip, but the whole hellenic world. In this he towers above the greatest of his predecessors for half a century before his birth—Perikles, Archidamus, Agesilaus, Epaminondas; whose policy was Athenian, Spartan, Theban, rather than hellenic. He carries us back to the time of the invasion of Xerxes and the generation immediately succeeding it, when the struggles and sufferings of the Athenians against Persia were consecrated by complete identity of interest with collective Greece. The sentiments to which Demosthenes appeals throughout his numerous orations, are those of the noblest and largest patriotism; trying to inflame the ancient Grecian sentiment, of an autonomous hellenic world, as the indispensable condition of a dignified and desirable existence[778]—but inculcating at the same time that these blessings could only be preserved by toil, self-sacrifice, devotion of fortune, and willingness to brave hard and steady personal service.

[778] Demosthenes, De Coronâ, p. 324. οὗτοι—τὴν ἐλευθερίαν καὶ τὸ
μηδένα ἔχειν δεσπότην αὑτῶν, ἃ τοῖς προτέροις Ἕλλησιν ὅροι τῶν
ἀγαθῶν ἦσαν καὶ κανόνες, ἀνατετραφότες, etc.

From the destruction of Thebes by Alexander in 335 B. C., to the Lamian war after his death, the policy of Athens neither was nor could be conducted by Demosthenes. But, condemned as he was to comparative inefficacy, he yet rendered material service to Athens, in the Harpalian affair of 324 B. C. If, instead of opposing the alliance of the city with Harpalus, he had supported it as warmly as Hyperides—the exaggerated promises of the exile might probably have prevailed, and war would have been declared against Alexander. In respect to the charge of having been corrupted by Harpalus, I have already shown reasons for believing him innocent. The Lamian war, the closing scene of his activity, was not of his original suggestion, since he was in exile at its commencement. But he threw himself into it with unreserved ardor, and was greatly instrumental in procuring the large number of adhesions which it obtained from so many Grecian states. In spite of its disastrous result, it was, like the battle of Chæroneia, a glorious effort for the recovery of Grecian liberty, undertaken under circumstances which promised a fair chance of success. There was no excessive rashness in calculating on distractions in the empire left by Alexander—on mutual hostility among the principal officers—and on the probability of having only to make head against Antipater and Macedonia, with little or no reinforcement from Asia. Disastrous as the enterprise ultimately proved, yet the risk was one fairly worth incurring, with so noble an object at stake; and could the war have been protracted another year, its termination would probably have been very different. We shall see this presently when we come to follow Asiatic events. After a catastrophe so ruinous, extinguishing free speech in Greece, and dispersing the Athenian Demos to distant lands, Demosthenes himself could hardly have desired, at the age of sixty-two, to prolong his existence as a fugitive beyond sea.

Of the speeches which he composed for private litigants, occasionally also for himself, before the Dikastery—and of the numerous stimulating and admonitory harangues on the public affairs of the moment, which he had addressed to his assembled countrymen, a few remain for the admiration of posterity. These harangues serve to us, not only as evidence of his unrivalled excellence as an orator, but as one of the chief sources from which we are enabled to appreciate the last phase of free Grecian life, as an acting and working reality.