The Historians' History of the World 04 [Greece to the Roman Conquest]

THE UNPOPULARITY OF DEMOSTHENES

“Demosthenes was never entirely popular. He had nothing grand in him but his eloquence and will. Dignity of character was wanting. Is it to be said that the highest virtues were necessary in Athens for the popularity of a political man? By no means. Virtue was a title, but the contrary of virtue had also its influence when it was joined to elegance. For Demosthenes, who owed a ridiculous surname [Batalos] to hidden debauches, and who devoted the rest of his youth to an ungrateful work, had neither the graces of vice nor the dignity of virtue. He was neither Aristides nor Alcibiades. Nor had he the easy levity of Cleon and many other demagogues. He was a man of anxiety and toil. He had not the good-natured and happy insolence of a popular orator, who plays with the people and himself, and enlivens the tribune: neither did he possess that which was the contrary, that is to say, natural dignity, the majestic calm which made Pericles the organ of divine reason, a kind of medium between Athens and its destiny, between the people and the spirit of the republic. Demosthenes was violent and laborious. His discourses smelt of oil, but smoothness was absent from them. It was premeditated vehemence, the result of art as much as of inspiration. In short, the people had seen this orator raise himself slowly from mediocrity, and buy his power with long night studies; he inoculated himself patiently with genius. They had hissed at Demosthenes and had seen him come back stronger; they had hissed again and he had returned all-powerful. The mob is wrong in rarely pardoning such marvels. The mob, with eternal injustice, more willingly gives its approbation to the idleness of genius than to the fertile preparation of work; it adds its partiality in favour of destiny, and the glory which gives itself is more brilliant in its eyes than that which must be conquered. The conduct of Demosthenes, as haughty as his eloquence, would often have irritated a less suspicious democracy. This energetic spirit, nourished by contests, which struggle and effort had alone rendered fruitful, never distrusted its natural impetuosity. Demosthenes applied to political difficulties the same violence he had so happily used against his natural difficulties; he treated his adversaries like the obstacles which had prevented his becoming eloquent. One day an accomplice of Philip, Antiphon, arraigned before the assembly of the people, is sent away acquitted. Demosthenes snatched away the benefit of the popular sentence, arraigned him before the Areopagus, and never rested until he was condemned to death. When has a democracy patiently allowed itself to be thus defended against itself and its judgments broken?

“Demosthenes was of the aristocracy; the aristocracy of money, it is true, but it is sufficient to read Aristophanes to feel that this aristocracy was the heaviest to bear, when one had the misfortune to belong to it. Demosthenes was rich, the son of riches, and he boasted about it with perilous intemperance. In the Discourse on the Crown he opposed his fortune to the poverty of Æschines, with a disgust and hardness contrary to the Athenian spirit.

“Add to so many causes of unpopularity, the natural inconsistency of the people, the sacrifices Demosthenes claimed from them, the dangers and the reverses of his politics, and one will be surprised at the lasting power of this great man. The explanation thereof is entirely in the strength and clearness of his wonderful genius. Every day he showed his prodigious eloquence, which consisted in raising his audience above its ordinary intelligence, communicated for a moment to the crowd the generosity of a great soul and the divination of a superior mind. He made the people capable of feeling what was noble in politics, and understanding what was necessary. He showed them in this policy the natural result of the Athenian destiny. He identified his work with the work of that superior power against which all complaint is useless and all anger ridiculous, the work of Necessity.”

But perhaps the most satisfactory claim Demosthenes has on the memory of all time is to be found in that inevitable beauty which surrounds a losing battle fought to the end. Professor Jebbe has said, “As a statesman, Demosthenes needs no epitaph but his own words in the speech On the Crown: ‘I say that, if the event had been manifest to the whole world beforehand, not even then ought Athens to have forsaken this course, if Athens had any regard for her glory, or for her past, or for the ages to come.’”

PHILIP’S BETTER SIDE

But finally, while we are endeavouring to be judicial, it is appropriate to think of the better side of King Philip. He, too, had obstacles to overcome, and he suffers from the pathetic consequences of success; for we forgive the weaknesses and vices and the underhand measures of the one who fails, but we are prone to impute the success of the man who succeeds, purely to the evil of his ways. Once more we may quote Prévost-Paradold: