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been previously mentioned, was suddenly entered by one of the Spartan generals, who seized the citadel, and drove many of the principal citizens into banishment. One of the exiles was Pelopidas, a young, rich, and warm-tempered man, who watched his opportunities and returned, after three or four years, like another Thrasybulus, 255 to expel the Spartan garrison and set his fellow-citizens at liberty. Successful in his venture, and joined by his friend Epaminondas, a calmer, and, in point of fortune, a poorer man, who had not been exiled, 256 Pelopidas was the giver of a fresh bloom to the counsels and the hopes of Thebes. The Spartans were defeated at the neighbouring Leuctra; Peloponnesus was several times invaded, and Messenia was rescued too late from the meshes of her long dependence upon Sparta. But the spirit of the state which triumphed was scarcely truer to liberty than that of the state which suffered. A treaty was concluded between Thebes and Persia; and the ambition of the Theban leaders rose with their successes of every year, 257 until Pelopidas fell in Thessaly, and Epaminondas, in his fourth invasion of the Peloponnesus, was slain, in victory, at Mantinea. The fall of Thebes was swifter than its rise had been, ten years and more before.

But the Spartans had met with shame and loss of which their ancestors could never have dreamed, and

255 So says Plutarch, Pel., 12. See Corn. Nep., Pel., 4. It was in A. C. 378. The battle of Leuctra was fought in 371, that of Mantinea in 362.

256 Plut., Pelop., 5.
257 Diod. Sic., XV. 78.

from which there could be no recovery. Invaded and dismantled without, at the same time that it was divided 258 and reduced 259 within, the state of Lycurgus lingered helpless, until the power of Rome put an end to its protracted agony. Athens was scarcely stronger; her people were few, compared with their slaves and aliens; her armies and fleets were entirely given over to mercenaries; and the changes in her taxes 260 betray the necessities she was obliged more carefully to supply. But the oil was poured upon her wounded limbs by hands like those of Demosthenes, and there was yet, a little while, the hope that her vigor would be restored. The tributary islands that still belonged to the Athenian dominion, and of which the profoundest submission would have been unavailing to the protection of their metropolis, were again become restive under hard government; 261 and when Athens, like most of the Grecian states, was dragged into the miserable war of Delphi, it seemed as if the last hours of discord and struggle were arrived. The Gladiator in the Capitol, consenting to death, without the wish to live for the liberty he had lost, is the image, but too serene, perhaps, of the nation, that was already bleeding and

258 Even by conspiracies, when the Thebans were at hand. Plut., Ages., 32.

259 We have only to borrow the judgment of Aristotle :-'Arάλεто dià Tηv oλiyavoрwñíav, "The state was lost for want of men." Pol., II. 6. 11. The philosopher says

truly, near the same place, that the Spartans perished, after having been powerful, because they knew not how to be at rest. Ibid., II. 6. 22. 260 See Boeckh, Pol. Econ. Ath., Book IV. ch. 9.

261 Diod. Sic., XVI. 7.

drooping when Philip came to the throne of Macedonia.

It was to a colony from Argos, settled amongst the wilder people of the North, some centuries before, that the later kings of Macedonia traced their inheritance of a part in the Grecian name. While the states we have left were jostling one another in their race for power and civilization, the northern kingdom, aloof, comparatively, from their interests, was gradually extending its dominions. The knowledge and the warfare, cast in the restless waters of the South, would often reach, as if in circles, to farther regions; but Macedonia remained possessed of a freshness and vigor that, in the present condition of its neighbours, were formidable to confront or even to behold. Philip, the eighteenth monarch of the Argive line, was placed where he could turn his talents to their uses, under the Providence that had created him ambitious, passionate, and wary. He made himself king, against the superior title of his nephew to the throne; he beat back his barbarian and deceived his civilized adversaries; until, taking advantage of the war about Delphi, he obtained a foremost position in the old Amphictyonic league and the ancient Grecian games." His great ambition was to make himself the master or the leader of Greece, in whose name, and with whose assistance, he then intended to cross the sea and destroy the Persian empire. The Greeks lay almost prostrate in his way.

262

262 Diod. Sic., XVI. 60.

One man there was, and only one, in whom the freedom of many people and many ages found a defender: he was Demosthenes. Early a statesman, and earlier still an orator of all-surpassing powers, he, from the beginning of his public career, devoted himself to the protection of his countrymen against their common foe; 263 nor did he falter more than, in such times as his, was unavoidable, even in the noblest purposes of humanity. A few around him were honest, like Phocion; but by these he was too often thwarted and suspected, as by the same Phocion, to be ever cordially encouraged.264 Others, the larger number of the leading men, were corrupted 265 or indifferent; while the populace with whom the orator had to deal was rather to be baffled than to be trusted. Demosthenes was the last of the great dynasty of orators in Athens, the successor of Lysias and Isocrates, the rival of Eschines; but so much superior to the rest,266 that their glory merges in his own. tarch compares him to Cicero: 267 and whatever were the dissimilarities between the two, in this, at least, they were alike, that their eloquence and their patriotism were insufficient to save the liberties they loved as became their generous minds. Just as, in

263 Plut., Dem., 12. Aaßov rηS πολιτείας καλὴν ὑπόθεσιν, τὴν πρὸς Φίλιππον ὑπὲρ τῶν Ἑλλήνων δικαιολoyiar. He was then twenty-nine years old, A. C. 356. See his own magnificent language: Philipp. I., Cap. II. et seq., ed. Væmel. This oration was delivered in 352. 264 Plut., Phoc., 9, 16, 17.

Plu

265 See the oration of Demosthenes, De Corona, Cap. 60 et seq.

266 The reader will find a brief and vivid account of Demosthenes in J. A. St. John, Hellenes, Book II. ch. 10,-a very readable work on Greece at large.

267 Plut., Dem., 3.

Rome, the separation of the people and the licentiousness of the rich were more than Cicero could overcome; so, in Greece, the dishonesty and the dissension of his countrymen were evils before which Demosthenes was powerless. Faithful, nevertheless, in the midst of faithlessness, and warm in heart to every countryman he had, however coldly they returned his affection, Demosthenes labored, unwearied, for fourteen years, from the day of his first oration against Philip until the force and the ambition of the Macedonian prevailed against the weaknesses of the Greeks and the exhortations of their almost solitary freeman. The orator fled, at length, before the soldier; the civilized republic yielded to the uncivilized monarchy: and the defeat at Charonea was the end of liberty in Greece.268 Philip trampled, intoxicated, upon the corpses with which the battle-field was strewn,269 and for which, in contrast, the funeral rites were afterwards performed in the house of Demosthenes, who pronounced the eulogy of the slain.270

Two years later, Alexander succeeded, at the age of twenty, to the throne which Philip had established upon the mouldering independence of the Greeks. The son, after mourning, as he said, that he should have nothing left him to do, openly derided his father, as unfit to invade the Persian empire,271 of which he seemed to feel himself to be the destined destroyer.

268 A. C. 338. "Hic dies universæ Græciæ et gloriam dominationis et vetustissimam libertatem finivit." Justin., IX. 3.

269 Plut., Dem., 20.

270 Demosth., De Coron., Cap. 285, 287. Demosthenes lived sixteen years longer, till A. C. 322. 271 Plut., Alex. Mag., 5, 9.

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