A LITTLE before noon on the sixteenth, I was walking in the Porch--it was on the left-hand side as you go out--, when Thersagoras appeared; I dare say he is known to some of you--short, hook-nosed, fair-complexioned, and virile. He drew nearer, and I spoke: 'Thersagoras the poet. Whence, and whither?' 'From home, hither,' he replied. 'Just a stroll?' I asked. 'Why, I do need a stroll too,' he said. 'I got up in the small hours, impressed with the duty of making a poetic offering on Homer's birthday.' 'Very proper,' said I; 'a good way of paying for the education he has given you.' 'That was how I began,' he continued, 'and time has glided by till now it is just upon noon; that was what I meant by saying I wanted a stroll. 'However, I wanted something else much more--an inter view with this gentleman' (and he pointed to the Homer; you know the one on the right of the Ptolemies' shrine, with the hair hanging loose); 'I came to greet him, and to pray for a good flow of verse.' 'Ah,' I sighed, 'if prayers would do it! in that case I should have given Demosthenes a worrying for assistance against his birthday. If prayers availed, I would join my wishes to yours; for the boons we desire are the same.' 'Well, I put down to Homer,' he replied, 'my facility of this night and morning; ardours divine and mystic have possessed me. But you shall judge. Here are my tablets, which I have brought with designs upon any idle friend I might light upon; and you, I rejoice to see, are idle.' 'Ah, you lucky man!' I exclaimed; 'you are like the winner of the three miles, who had washed off the dust, and could 'Good,' I said, 'and you must allow me to give mine to Demosthenes. But, though you do not disqualify my subject, I am sure you think poetry the only real treatment; you feel about mere rhetoric what the cavalryman feels as he gallops past the infantry.' 'I hope I am not so mad as that,' he said, 'though a considerable touch of madness is required of him who would pass the gates of poetry.' 'If you come to that, prose cannot do without some divine inspiration either, if it is not to be flat and common.' He admitted that at once: 'I often delight myself with comparing passages from Demosthenes and other prose writers with Homer in point of vehemence, pungency, fire. "Flown with wine" I pair off against the revellings and dancings and debauchery of Philip; "One presage that ne’er fails 1" finds its counterpart in "It is for brave men, founding themselves upon brave hopes--"; "How would old Peleus, lord of steeds, repine--" is matched by "What a cry of lamentation would go up from the men of those days
'Tradition gives us no hint of how Homer was educated or developed his powers; the panegyrist must plunge straight into his works, and can find nothing to talk about in his breeding and training and pupilage; he has not even the resource of that Hesiodic sprig of bay which could make a facile poet out of a shepherd. But think of your abundance in this branch of the subject. There is Callistratus and all the mighty roll of orators, Alcidamas, Isocrates, Isaeus, Eubulides. Then again, at Athens even those who were subject to paternal control had countless temptations to indulgence, youth is the susceptible time, a neglected ward could have lived as irregular a life as he chose, and yet the objects that Demosthenes set up for himself were philosophy and patriotism, and the doors they took him to not Phryne's, but those of Aristotle and Theophrastus, Xenocrates and Plato. 'And so, my dear sir, your way is open to a disquisition upon the two kinds of human love, the one sprung of a desire that is like the sea, outrageous, fierce, stormily rocking the soul; it is a true sea wave, which the earthly Aphrodite sets rolling with the tempestuous passions of youth; but the other is the steady drawing of a golden cord from heaven; it does not scorch and pierce and leave festering wounds; it impels towards the pure and unsullied ideal of absolute beauty, and is a sane madness in those souls which "yet hold of Zeus and nurse the spark divine." 'Love will find out the way, though that way involve a shaven Callisthenes remarked of Aeschylus that he wrote his tragedies in wine, which lent vigour and warmth to his work. With Demosthenes it was otherwise; he composed not on wine but on water; whence the witticism of Demades, that most men's tongues are regulated by water 2, but Demosthenes's pen was subject to the same influence. And Pytheas detected the smell of the midnight oil in the very perfection of the speeches. Well, there is much in common between your subject and mine, so far as this branch of them is concerned; on Homer's poems I was no worse off than you are. 'But when you come to your hero's acts of humanity, his pecuniary sacrifices, his grand political achievements ' (and he was going on in full swing to the rest of the catalogue, when I interrupted, with a laugh: 'Must I be dowsed with the remainder of your canful, good bath-man?' 'Most certainly,' he retorted, and went straight on), 'the public entertainments
'But now here is another great advantage that I consider you have over me. The poetic faculty has a single aim; from which it follows that Homer's glory must be laid hold of at once and as a whole. You on the other hand, if you were to attempt dealing with the whole Demosthenes all at once, would never know what to say; you would waver and not be able to set your thoughts to work. You would be like the gourmand at a Sicilian banquet, or the aesthete who has a thousand delightful sights and sounds presented to him at once; they do not know which way to turn for their conflicting desires. I suspect that you too are distracted and find concentration impossible; all round you are the varied attractions--his magnanimity, his fire, his orderly life, his oratorical force and practical courage, the endless opportunities of gain that he scorned, his justice, humanity, honour,AN ENCOMIUM
Cadmus? the race from dragon's teeth that came?
Thebe's dark circlet? the all-daring might
Of Heracles? great Bacchus' merry fame?
White-armed Harmonia's bridal?--Ay, but which?
My Muse, we 're poor in that we are too rich.
Or if you prefer his character, or his policy, it will be well to isolate some particular detail--if you are greedy you may pick out two or three--which will give you quite enough to go upon; so great was he at every point. And for such specializing we
'You have been prescribing for the troubles that would attend a first attempt; unfortunately it is years and years since I got through that stage, and your remedies are quite out of date.' 'Why, then,' he exclaimed, 'the cure is complete; nobody is nervous about a road of which he knows every inch.'
'Ah, but then I have set my heart upon reversing the feat that Anniceris of Cyrene exhibited to Plato and his friends. To show what a fine driver he was, he drove round the Academy time after time exactly in his own track, which looked after it as if it had only been traversed once. Now my endeavour is just the opposite, to avoid my old tracks; and it is by no means
'You have more shifts than ever Proteus had,' he said, 'to get off hearing my poem.'
'Oh, do not say that,' said I; 'off goes my burden of care, and I am at your service. Perhaps when you have got over your own pains of child-birth you will show more feeling for my delicate state.'
He liked the offer, we settled down on a convenient stone step, and I listened to some excellent poetry. In the middle of reading he was seized with an idea, did up his tablets, and said: 'You shall have your hearer's fee, as well deserved as an Athenian's after a day in court or assembly. Thank me, please.' 'I do, before I know what for. But what may it be?' 'It was in the Macedonian royal archives that I came across the book;
I was delighted with it at the time, and took considerable trouble to secure it; it has just come into my head that I have it at home. It contains, among details of Antipater's management of the household, facts about Demosthenes that I think you will find worth your best attention.' 'You shall have
This book, then (the part of the state records that concerns us is the conversation I shall give you)--the book informs us that Archias's name was announced to Antipater. In case any of my younger hearers should not know the fact already, this Archias had been charged with the arrest of all exiles. In particular, he was to get Demosthenes from Calauria into Antipater's presence, but rather by persuasion than by force. Antipater was excited about it, hoping that Demosthenes might arrive any day. So, hearing that Archias was come from Calauria, he gave orders for his instant admittance.
When he entered--but you shall have the conversation as it stands.
Archias. Antipater
Ar. Is it well with you, Antipater?
Ant. It is well, if you have brought Demosthenes.
Ar. I have brought him as I might. I have the urn that holds his remains
Ant. You did not well, even in the intention; it may be your violence killed him.
Ar. No, we killed him not; but if we could not persuade him, there was nothing for it but force. But, O King, how had you been the better off, if he had come alive? you could have done no more than kill him.
Ant. Peace, Archias! methinks you comprehend neither the nature of Demosthenes, nor my mind. You think there is no more in the finding of Demosthenes than in the hunting down such scoundrels as Himeraeus or Aristonicus or Eucrates; these are like swollen torrents--mean fellows in themselves, to whom a passing storm gives brief importance; they make a brave show while the disturbance lasts; but they are as sure to vanish soon as the wind to fall at evening. The recreant Hyperides is another--a selfish demagogue, who took no shame to curry favour with the mob by libelling Demosthenes, and make himself its instrument for ends that his dupes soon wished they had never attained; for the libels had not long borne their
Ant. Not in the eyes of one who cares for an honourable nature, and loves a sincere consistent character. The noble is noble, though it be in an enemy; and virtue has no country. Am I meaner than Xerxes? he could admire Bulis and Sperchis the Spartans, and release them when they were in his power. No man that ever lived do I admire more than Demosthenes; twice I was in his company at Athens (in hurried times, it is true), and I have heard much from others, and there is his work to judge by. And what moves me is not his skill in speech. You might well suppose so; Python was nothing, matched with him, and the Attic orators but babes in comparison with his finish and intensity, the music of his words, the clearness of his thoughts, his chains of proof, his cumulative blows. We found our mistake when we listened to Python and his promises; we had gathered the Greeks to Athens to see the Athenians confuted; it was Demosthenes who confuted us. But no words of mine can describe the power of his eloquence.
Yet to that I give but a secondary place, as a tool the man used. It was the man himself I marvelled at, his spirit and his wisdom, and the steadiness of soul that steered a straight course through all the tempests of fortune with never a craven impulse. And Philip was of my mind about him; when a speech of his before the Athenian assembly against Philip was reported, Parmenio was angry, and made some bitter jest upon him. But Philip said: Ah, Parmenio, he has a right to say what he pleases; he is the only popular orator in all Greece whose name is missing in my secret service accounts, though I would far rather have put myself in his hands than in those of clerks and third-rate
This is the way I look at it, Parmenio. An Athenian who speaking in Athens prefers me to his country shall have of my money, but not of my friendship; as for one who hates me for his country's sake, I will assault him as I would a citadel, a wall, a dock, a trench, but I have only admiration for his virtue, and congratulations for the State that possesses him. The other kind I should like to crush as soon as they have served my purpose; but him I would sooner have here with us than the Illyrian and Triballian horse and all my mercenaries; arguments that carry conviction, weight of intellect, I do not put below force of arms.
That was to Parmenio; and he said much the same to me. At the time of the Athenian expedition under Diopithes, I was very anxious, but Philip laughed at me heartily, and said: Are you afraid of these town-bred generals and their men? Their fleet, their Piraeus, their docks, I snap my fingers at them. What is to be looked for from people whose worship is of Dionysus, whose life is in feasting and dancing? If Demosthenes, and not a man besides, had been subtracted from Athens, we should have had it with less trouble than Thebes or Thessaly; deceit and force, energy and corruption, would soon have done the thing. But he is ever awake; he misses no occasion; he makes move for move and counters every stroke. Not a trick of ours, not an attempt begun or only thought of, but he has intelligence of it; in a word he is the obstacle that stands between us and the swift attainment of our ends. It was little fault of his that we took Amphipolis, that we won Olynthus, Phocis, Thermopylae, that we are masters of the Hellespont.
This is the direction your fears should take, Antipater; never mind all the war-ships and all the fleets. What Themistocles and Pericles were to the Athens of old, that is Demosthenes to Athens to-day, as shrewd as Themistocles, as high of soul as Pericles. He it was that gained them the control of Euboea and Megara, the Hellespont and Boeotia. It is well indeed that they give the command to such as Chores or Diopithes or Proxenus, and keep Demosthenes to the platform at home. If they had given into his hands their arms and ships and troops, their strategy and their money, I doubt he would have put me on my mettle to keep Macedonia; even now that he has no weapon but his decrees, he is with us at every turn, his hand is upon us; the ways and means are of his finding, the force of his gathering; it is he that sends armadas afar, he that joins power to power, he that meets our every change of plan.
This was his tone about Demosthenes on many other occasions too; he put it down as one of his debts to fortune that armies were never led by the man whose mere words were so many battering-rams and catapults worked from Athens to the shattering and confounding of his plans. As to Chaeronea, even the victory made no difference; he continued to impress upon us how precarious a position this one man had contrived for us.
Such was Philip's opinion. Now I am no Philip at the best, and do you suppose, Archias, that if I could have got a man like Demosthenes, I should have found nothing better to do with him than sending him like an ox to the slaughter? or should I have made him my right-hand man in the management of Greece and of the empire? I was instinctively attracted long ago by his public record--an attraction heightened by the witness of Aristotle. He constantly assured both Alexander and myself that among all the vast number of his pupils he had found none comparable to Demosthenes in natural genius and persevering self-development, none whose intellect was at once so weighty and so agile, none who spoke his opinions so freely or maintained them so courageously.
But you (said Aristotle) confuse him with an Eubulus, a Phrynon, a Philocrates, and think to convert with gifts a man who has actually
Ar. O King, your other ends you might have gained, but that you would have told him to no purpose; his love of Athens was a madness beyond cure.
Ant. It was so indeed; ’twere vain to deny it. But how died he?
Ar. O King, there is further wonder in store for you. We who have had the scene before our eyes are as startled and as unbelieving yet as when we saw it. He must long ago have determined how to die; his preparation shows it. He was seated within the temple, and our arguments of the days before had been spent on him in vain.
Ant. Ay? and what were they?
Ar. Long and kindly I urged him, with promises on your part, not that I looked to see them kept (for I knew not then, and took you to be wroth with him), but in hopes they might prevail.
Ant. And what hearing did he give them? Keep nothing back; I would I were there now, hearing him with my own
Ant. Ha? he left life for want of belief in my promises?
Ar. Not so; hear to the end, and you will see his distrust was not all for you. Since you bid me speak, O King, he told me there was no oath that could bind a Macedonian; it was nothing strange that they should use against Demosthenes the weapon that had won them Amphipolis, and Olynthus, and Oropus. And much more of the like; I had writers there, that his words might be preserved for you. Archias (he said), the prospect of death or torture would be enough to keep me out of Antipater's presence. And if you tell me true, I must be on my guard against the worse danger of receiving life itself as a present at his hands, and deserting, to serve Macedonia, that post which I have sworn to hold for Greece.
Life were a thing to be desired, Archias, were it purchased for me by the power of Piraeus (a war-ship, my gift, has floated there), by the wall and trench of which I bore the cost, by the tribe Pandionis whose festival charges I took upon me, by the spirit of Solon and Draco, by unmuzzled statesmen and a free people, by martial levies and naval organization, by the virtues and the victories of our fathers, by the affection of fellow citizens who have crowned me many a time, and by the might of a Greece whose guardian I have never ceased to be. Or again, if life is to be owed to compassion, though it be mean enough, yet compassion I might endure among the kindred of the captives I have ransomed, the fathers whose daughters I have helped to portion, and the men whose debts I have joined in paying.
Sir actor, let me recall to you a fine passage from one of your tragedies 1:
And then, Lay no hand upon me. Be it not mine to bring outrage upon the temple; I will but greet the God, and follow of my free will. And for me, I put reliance upon this, and when he lifted his hand to his mouth, I thought it was but to do obeisance.
Ant. And it was indeed--?
Ar. We put his servant to the question later, and learned from her that he had long had poison by him, to give him liberty by parting soul from body. He had not yet passed the holy threshold, when he fixed his eye on me and said: 'Take this to Antipater; Demosthenes you shall not take, no, by------' And methought he would have added, by the men that fell at Marathon.
And with that farewell he parted. So ends, O King, the siege of Demosthenes.
Ant. Archias, that was Demosthenes. Hail to that unconquerable soul! how lofty the spirit, how republican the care, that would never be parted from their warrant of freedom! Enough; the man has gone his way, to live the life they tell of in the Isles of the heroic Blest, or to walk the paths that, if tales be true, the heaven-bound spirits tread; he shall attend, surely, on none but that Zeus who is named of Freedom. For his body, we will send it to Athens, a nobler offering to that land than the men that died at Marathon. H.
146:1 Homer, Il. xii. 243. 'One omen is best--to fight for our own country.'
150:1 See Demosthenes in Notes.
150:2 Speeches in the law courts had a time limit appointed, which was measured by the water-clock or clepsydra, generally called simply 'the water,' 'my water,' 'his water,' &c.
158:1 To get a meaning, I translate as though the Greek, instead of οὐ Βοιωτίας οὐδ᾽ ἔνθα τι μή, were ὁ μὲν Βοιωτίας, ὁ δ᾽ ἔνθα.
163:1 Euripides, Hecuba. See Polyxena in Notes.
164:1 Oracle in Herodotus vii. 141: 'A bulwark of wood at the last Zeus grants to the Trito-born goddess | Sole to remain unwasted.' G. C. Macaulay. Variously interpreted of the thorn hedge of the Acropolis, and of the Athenian fleet.