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Demosthenes and Isocrates Address Philip of Macedonia Demosthenes and Isocrates Address Philip of Macedonia Among the Greeks, Demosthenes reacted most strongly said that it was not one of the blood, not the lawful heir to the growing strength and expansionary policies of the who was acting thus. But if some slave or illegitimate Macedonian king Philip II. Demosthenes delivered a series bastard had wasted and squandered what he had no of orations to the Athenian assembly in which he por- right to, heavens! how much more monstrous and exas- trayed Philip as a ruthless and barbaric man. The first perating all would have called it! Yet they have no such selection is from Demosthenes’ Third Philippic, delivered qualms about Philip and his present conduct, though he around 341 B.C.E. Isocrates, an Athenian teacher of rheto- is not only no Greek, nor related to the Greeks, but not ric, saw Philip in a different light and appealed to him to even a barbarian from any place that can be named with lead both Greeks and Macedonians in a war against the honor, but a pestilent knave from Macedonia, from Persians. The second selection is from Isocrates’ Address where it was never yet possible to buy a decent slave. to Philip, written in 346 B.C.E. Isocrates, Address to Philip Demosthenes, The Third Philippic I chose to address to you what I have to say ...Iam I observe, however, that all men, and you first of all, going to advise you to champion the cause of concord have conceded to him something which has been the oc- among the Hellenes and of a campaign against the bar- casion of every war that the Greeks have ever waged. And barians; and as persuasion will be helpful in dealing what is that? The power of doing what he likes, of calmly with the Hellenes, so compulsion will be useful in deal- plundering and stripping the Greeks one by one, and of ing with the barbarians. ... attacking their cities and reducing them to slavery. Yet I affirm that, without neglecting any of your own your hegemony in Greece lasted seventy-three years, that interests, you ought to make an effort to reconcile Argos of Sparta twenty-nine, and in these later times Thebes and Sparta and Thebes and Athens; for if you can bring too gained some sort of authority after the battle of these cities together, you will not find it hard to unite Leuctra. But neither to you nor to the Thebans nor to the the others as well. ... Spartans did the Greeks ever yet, men of Athens, concede You see how utterly wretched these states have be- the right of unrestricted action, or anything like it. On come because of their warfare, and how like they are to the contrary, when you, or rather the Athenians of that men engaged in a personal encounter; for no one can day, were thought to be showing a want of consideration reconcile the parties to a quarrel while their wrath is ris- in dealing with others, all felt it their duty, even those ing; but after they have punished each other badly, they who had no grievance against them, to go to war in sup- need no mediator, but separate of their own accord. And port of those who had been injured. ...Yet all the faults that is just what I think these states also will do unless committed by the Spartans in those thirty years, and by you first take them in hand. ... our ancestors in their seventy years of supremacy, are Now regarding myself, and regarding the course which fewer, men of Athens, than the wrongs which Philip has you should take toward the Hellenes, perhaps no more done to the Greeks in the thirteen incomplete years in need be said. But as to the expedition against Asia, we shall which he has been coming to the top—or rather, they urge upon the cities which I have called upon you to recon- are not a fraction of them. ...Ay, and you know this cilethatitistheirdutytogotowarwiththebarbarians. also, that the wrongs which the Greeks suffered from the Spartans or from us, they suffered at all events at What are Demosthenes’ criticisms of Philip II? What the hands of true-born sons of Greece, and they might Q appeal does Isocrates make to Philip? What do these have been regarded as the acts of a legitimate son, born documents tell you about the persistent factionalism to great possessions, who should be guilty of some fault and communal tensions within the Greek world? In or error in the management of his estate: so far he light of subsequent events, who—Demosthenes or would deserve blame and reproach, yet it could not be Isocrates—made the stronger argument? Why? Alexander. Although Alexander justly deserves credit for Alexander the Great the destruction of the Persian Empire, it was Philip who Alexander was only twenty when he became king of really paved the way for the conquest. He had unified Macedonia. In the next twelve years, he achieved so much Macedonia, created a powerful military machine, and that he has ever since been called Alexander the Great. subdued the Greeks. Macedonia and the Conquests of Alexander 91.
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