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The Historians' History of the World 04 [Greece to the Roman Conquest]
- Автор: Gutenberg
- Год: 1905
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: История
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As regards the common people, nothing whatever was changed in their condition. They had never, as in Greece, formed a political body, and there was no Macedonian city. Apparently everything took place by popular consent, but the army was the Macedonian people. Philip frequently harangued his troops; a proceeding that offered no danger, since the soldiers of a bellicose chief never withhold from him their approbation. Macedonia was a nation of soldiers; hence its government, maintaining a permanent army and engaged in perpetual wars, could be none other than a military monarchy.
THE WAXING OF PHILIP
As soon as he had made his kingdom safe from the attacks of barbarians, Philip wished to extend his dominion to the sea, access to which was closed by the Grecian colonies. Some of these had ranged themselves under the protection of Athens, others under that of Olynthus. Amphipolis was independent; Olynthus and Athens had an equal interest in preserving this independence and Philip himself had formally recognised it; nevertheless it was decided not to hold to this obligation, but to seize Amphipolis. It was necessary to prevent the Olynthians and Athenians from uniting for its defence, and in this endeavour Philip made use of wile, he possessing, even in a greater degree than Lysander, the combined qualities of the fox and the lion. He persuaded the Athenians that his only desire in taking Amphipolis was to deliver it to them in exchange for Pydna, a Macedonian town which had placed itself under their protection. At the same time he made sure of the neutrality of the Olynthians, and even obtained help from them by delivering to them Anthemus, and by promising them Potidæa, which belonged to the Athenians. The latter, over-confident of his good faith, did not respond to the appeal of Amphipolis for help. Philip took the town, and afterwards treacherously entered and took Pydna, keeping them both. The Athenians had been outdone, but they could not seek vengeance for this perfidy, as they were engaged at the time in the war of the allies, and had need of all their forces to carry it to an end. This encouraged Philip to take another step; he seized Potidæa, which was occupied by an Athenian garrison, politely sent back the garrison to Athens, and delivered the town to the Olynthians, whom he wished to place in a position of conflicting interests towards the Athenians (357).
Master of Amphipolis, Philip crossed the Strymon with the intention of possessing himself of the mining region of Mount Pangea. He founded there upon the site of the ancient Thasian city Crenides, a new town which he called Philippi, upon the money of which was imprinted the head of Hercules, ancestor of the Macedonian kings. The city of Philippi was at once a military post, the entrance to Thrace, and a centre of exploitation for the mines of Mount Pangea. These mines, far better operated than they had been by the Thasians and Athenians, furnished Philip with an annual revenue of a thousand talents, [£200,000 or $1,000,000] out of which he made the handsome gold coins which bear his name. This source of riches which enabled him to support his army and to buy traitors in the Greek cities, contributed to his greatness at least as much as the phalanx. He declared that no city was impregnable into which could be driven a mule laden with gold pieces.c
Greek Masks
Fragment of Sculpture, showing Oarsmen in Galley
CHAPTER XLIX. THE TRIUMPHS OF PHILIP
DEMOSTHENES, THE ORATOR
The trite proverb that “the pen is mightier than the sword,” like all other proverbs, expresses hardly half the truth. Never was there a more definite combat between the two sharp instruments than in the history of Greece at this period, for that history becomes hardly more than a pitched battle between a splendid organiser of armies and a splendid captain of arguments, and the parallel is the closer inasmuch as Demosthenes, though commonly thought of as an orator, was much more distinctly a writer; for he was decidedly inferior as a speaker to his great rival Æschines, and his orations are chiefly valuable for their logic and their cautious reasoning. Unlike the perishable glories of the art of oratory pure and simple, the art of Demosthenes has come down to us in considerable completeness, and forms a text-book whose eloquence is little appreciated by the students that reluctantly unravel its close-knit fabric.
As this duel between the king of Macedonia and the manufacturer’s son of Athens was so nearly a combat of equals, it will be well to cast a brief look at the biography of Demosthenes, since we have given so much attention to the formation of Philip’s character.a
The father of this great orator was an Athenian by birth, and exercised the trade of an armourer, by which he acquired considerable wealth. He married the daughter of one Gylon who had settled upon the borders of the Euxine Sea and contracted an alliance with a rich heiress of the country.[15] At the age of seven Demosthenes was deprived of his father, who left him a fortune which entitled him to rank with the wealthiest citizens. Though guardians had been appointed to manage his estate and direct his education, they seem to have dilapidated the one, and neglected the other. Left at an early age entirely to himself, he launched out into expenses with all the extravagance and vanity of youth, acted as choregus or president of theatrical entertainments, and equipped a ship of war for the service of the republic. He spent the first part of his life without any fixed purpose or aim, indulging in such a state of indolence and effeminacy, as to have his name stigmatised by a term of reproach [Batalos]. But the seeds of genius, being either allowed to shoot up in wild luxuriance or to lie dormant through neglect, were soon to spring up with amazing vigour. He determined thenceforth to devote himself wholly to the study of eloquence. At that time learning of all kinds, but particularly philosophy and the art of rhetoric, was cultivated with great eagerness by the Athenian youth. Plato had established his school in the Academy, and was attended by a vast concourse. Demosthenes attended it with great assiduity, as well as that of Isæus the rhetorician. After these preparatory studies, he tried his strength against his guardians, whom he obliged to refund a part of his property. Emboldened by this success, he mounted the tribunal to harangue the people upon the state of affairs, but was heard with very little attention, and no signs of approbation. Not discouraged by this unfavourable reception, he made a second attempt and was equally unsuccessful.
As he retired, exceedingly depressed by his ill-success, and determined in his mind to relinquish a pursuit for which nature seemed to have rendered him unfit, by denying him the free use of the organs of speech, and a sufficient quantity of breath to articulate distinctly a sentence of moderate length, he was met by one of his friends, a comedian, who exhorted him to conquer the natural and acquired defects under which he laboured. He instantly set about correcting, with the greatest perseverance and most extraordinary means, his rapid and inarticulate pronunciation, ungraceful and awkward gestures in declaiming, and several natural defects under which he laboured.c
The anecdotes of Demosthenes’ struggle with his defects are remembered by many people to whom the very name of King Philip is obscure. These anecdotes rest upon the orator’s own authority. The reader need hardly be reminded of the hours he spent talking with his mouth full of pebbles, shouting against the roar of the stormy ocean, practising his gestures before a mirror, expanding his lungs by running and by declaiming as he climbed the steep hills of which Greece is made, shaving half his head to compel himself to keep indoors at his studies, and shutting himself up for months at a time in an underground room where he copied all Thucydides eight times, and polished his own phrases to incandescence.