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Demosthenes and Isocrates Address Philip of Macedonia
Among the Greeks, 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’ Third Philippic, delivered
around 341 B.C.E. Isocrates, an Athenian teacher of rhetoric, 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’ Address
to Philip, written in 346 B.C.E.
said that it was not one of the blood, not the lawful heir
who was acting thus. But if some slave or illegitimate
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
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
plundering and stripping the Greeks one by one, and of
attacking 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 contrary, 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
Alexander. Although Alexander justly deserves credit for
the destruction of the Persian Empire, it was Philip who
really paved the way for the conquest. He had unified
Macedonia, created a powerful military machine, and
subdued the Greeks.
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 reconcile that it is their duty to go to war with the barbarians.
Q
What are Demosthenes’ 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?
Alexander the Great
Alexander was only twenty when he became king of
Macedonia. In the next twelve years, he achieved so much
that he has ever since been called Alexander the Great.
Macedonia and the Conquests of Alexander
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