Page 113 - Western Civilization A Brief History, Volume I To 1715 9th - Jackson J. Spielvogel

OPPOSING VIEWPOINTS
Demosthenes and Isocrates Address Philip of Macedonia
Among the Greeks, the statesman Demosthenes reacted most strongly to the growing strength and expansionary policies of the Macedonian king Philip II. Demosthenes delivered a series of orations to the Athenian assembly in which he portrayed Philip as a ruthless and barbaric man. The first selection is from Demosthenes’s Third Philippic, delivered around 341 B.C.E. Isocrates saw Philip in a different light and appealed to him to lead both Greeks and Macedonians in a war against the Persians. The second selection is from Isocrates’s Address to Philip, written in 346 B.C.E.
Demosthenes, The Third Philippic
I observe, however, that all men, and you first of all, have conceded to him something which has been the occasion of every war that the Greeks have ever waged. And what is that? The power of doing what he likes, of calmly plun- dering and stripping the Greeks one by one, and of attack- ing their cities and reducing them to slavery. Yet your hegemony in Greece lasted seventy-three years, that of Sparta twenty-nine, and in these later times Thebes too gained some sort of authority after the battle of Leuctra. But neither to you nor to the Thebans nor to the Spartans did the Greeks ever yet, men of Athens, concede the right of unrestricted action, or anything like it. On the con- trary, when you, or rather the Athenians of that day, were thought to be showing a want of consideration in dealing with others, all felt it their duty, even those who had no grievance against them, to go to war in support of those who had been injured. . . . Yet all the faults committed by the Spartans in those thirty years, and by our ancestors in their seventy years of supremacy, are fewer, men of Athens, than the wrongs which Philip has done to the Greeks in the thirteen incomplete years in which he has been coming to the top—or rather, they are not a fraction of them. . . . Ay, and you know this also, that the wrongs which the Greeks suffered from the Spartans or from us, they suffered at all events at the hands of true-born sons of Greece, and they might have been regarded as the acts of a legitimate son, born to great possessions, who should be guilty of some fault or error in the management of his estate: so far he would deserve blame and reproach, yet it
could not be said that it was not one of the blood, not the lawful heir who was acting thus. But if some slave or ille- gitimate bastard had wasted and squandered what he had no right to, heavens! How much more monstrous and exasperating all would have called it! Yet they have no such qualms about Philip and his present conduct, though he is not only no Greek, nor related to the Greeks, but not even a barbarian from any place that can be named with honor, but a pestilent knave from Macedonia, from where it was never yet possible to buy a decent slave.
Isocrates, Address to Philip
I chose to address to you what I have to say.... I am going to advise you to champion the cause of concord among the Hellenes and of a campaign against the barbarians; and as persuasion will be helpful in dealing with the Hellenes, so compulsion will be useful in dealing with the barbarians. . . .
I affirm that, without neglecting any of your own interests, you ought to make an effort to reconcile Argos and Sparta and Thebes and Athens; for if you can bring these cities together, you will not find it hard to unite the others as well. . . .
You see how utterly wretched these states have become because of their warfare, and how like they are to men engaged in a personal encounter; for no one can reconcile the parties to a quarrel while their wrath is rising; but after they have punished each other badly, they need no mediator, but separate of their own accord. And that is just what I think these states also will do unless you first take them in hand. . . .
Now regarding myself, and regarding the course which you should take toward the Hellenes, perhaps no more need be said. But as to the expedition against Asia, we shall urge upon the cities which I have called upon you to recon- cile that it is their duty to go to war with the barbarians.
Q What are Demosthenes’s criticisms of Philip II? What appeal does Isocrates make to Philip? What do these documents tell you about the persistent factionalism and communal tensions within the Greek world? In light of subsequent events, who—Demosthenes or Isocrates—made the stronger argument? Why?
Sources: Demosthenes, The Third Philippic. Reprinted by permission of the publishers and the Trustees of the Loeb Classical Library from Demosthenes, Loeb Classical Library Vol. I, trans. by J.H. Vince, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, copyright a 1930, by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. The Loeb Classical Library is a registered trademark of the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Isocrates, Address to Philip. Reprinted by permission of the publishers and the Trustees of the Loeb Classical Library from Isocrates, vol. 1, Loeb Classical Library Vol. 209, translated by George Norlin, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, Copyright a 1928, by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. The Loeb Classical Library is a registered trademark of the President and Fellows of Harvard College.
Macedonia and the Conquests of Alexander 75
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