Adam Smith’s Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres presents Demosthenes, alongside Cicero, as basic to education in rhetoric and humanism. His speeches before the Athenian Assembly are marked, observes Smith, by “austere Severity,” whereas Cicero, navigating Roman politics, is all pomp and flattery. James Romm, Professor of Classics at Bard College, reasons in Demosthenes: Democracy’s Defender that Demosthenes’ style had much to do with the fact that he “lived in diminished times.”
In these pages, Demosthenes appears as a precursor to liberal universalism, the view exemplified by Francis Fukuyama that liberal democracy is the sole true form of politics. This belief is strong in the US, but, as with Demosthenes, it led to poor policy, for example, the Global War on Terror. Thinking about geopolitics today, the reader may find it worthwhile to ponder this universalist assertion of the Greek rhetorician: “For every king and tyrant is an enemy to freedom and a foe to the rule of law.”
Demosthenes was born at Athens in 384 BC, a generation after the brutal Peloponnesian War. The city was in a bleak strategic position, and during Demosthenes’ years, that position only got bleaker. City revenues were a quarter of what they had been at the height of its empire, so Demosthenes’ “austere Severity” matched the geoeconomics of his day.
He is famous for his Philippics, the word used in English to identify, as Romm puts it, “a scorching verbal attack.” In a series of speeches, Demosthenes set out to remind Athens of her dignity and rouse the people to fight Philip II of Macedon. However, a battered Athens was no match for Philip, and the armies of the “great Engineer” (Smith) swept aside what Athens could still mobilize against the sarissa-tipped phalanx. The problem was not just that battlefield innovation had left Athens behind. As Romm explains, so had political innovation: “in truth it was hard for a fleet controlled by assembly to counter a warrior-monarch who simply gave marching orders.”
At Athens, all adult male citizens could meet in assembly and vote. Close to a pure democracy, the city was “fantastically logophilic” and “verbal dexterity conferred political power.” Romm admires Demosthenes, but this short biography—a 170-pages of lean writing—is not hagiography. Romm laments that too often Demosthenes’ speeches, “summon respect for his eloquence, since his policies did not always do him credit.” He was neither a strategist nor someone of towering virtue but in Greek politics, where oligarchy and democracy vied for loyalty, he was firmly on the side of democracy:
I don’t shrink from saying that I think you’d do better to have all the Greeks democratic, and at war with you, than for them all to be oligarchies and your allies. For I think you’d easily make peace with those who are free, whenever you chose to, but your friendship with oligarchies would never be secure.
At important moments, courage failed him, yet in a world where a strong opinion meant staking your life, he was steadfast in praising democracy. This loyalty did in fact cost him his life when Athens passed under Macedonian military rule.
The Rise
Demosthenes led the democratic faction in Athens, albeit unevenly, as his career was marked by setbacks and second chances. “He came to regard himself as that system’s best hope of survival, and its survival as the best hope for the Greeks,” proposes Romm, yet his was an unlikely career.
Policy debates and trials were conducted in assembly with thousands attending. Rules of procedure and forensic evidence barely existed, so everything hinged on speeches. For this reason, and although anyone in principle could address assemblies and make proposals, interested parties hired rhetores, “public speakers.” Demosthenes’ father died when he was young, and his guardians pilfered the family fortune. Once of age, he had a legacy worth 20 years’ wages; Demosthenes would need money, and his inheritance gave him time to hone a craft. He set himself two goals: to become a “logographos” known for eloquence, and therewith to gain “the high esteem of the demos.”
Physically, he was ill-suited to the role. Weak-framed with a stutter, Demosthenes was an abstemious loner. Mocked as a “water-drinker,” he was “a tireless worker of words,” and to build stamina and voice, he climbed hills whilst reciting speeches and often stood by the water shouting above the sound of the waves. He put pebbles in his mouth to cure his stutter, and recognizing that democracy is theatre, he took instruction from actors on projection, deportment, and gesturing. Philip would be the whetstone for Demosthenes’ sharp tongue.
In 405, the Spartan, Lysander, blockaded the Hellespont, the narrow opening between the Black Sea and the Aegean. This cut off Athenian trade with the rich farmlands of what is today Ukraine. Etched into the collective psyche of Athens, the food blockade brought to a rapid close the 27-year Peloponnesian War. In 351, Philip moved to take control of the Hellespont. At age 33, as a relative non-entity in terms of Athens’ great rhetores, Demosthenes delivered his “First Philippic.”
He urged Athens to take the initiative and send raiding parties to Thrace to disrupt Philip’s military buildup. A weary people were unpersuaded. In the second, he denounced Philip as untrustworthy and warned the people against his sympathizers at Athens, the Philippizers, a word Demosthenes coined. Indignation boiling, Demosthenes in his “Third Philippic” took the low road. He railed at Athens, chastising, “You haven’t been defeated, for you haven’t so much as stirred.” He also indulged xenophobia: the “vile Macedonian,” Demosthenes contended, was in no way a Greek, “hailing from where in the past one couldn’t even purchase a decent slave!” Proposing war, he called on collective memory and invoked the city’s fateful inheritance. “It’s you who must do this. Your ancestors won this prize by facing many great dangers, and bequeathed it to you.” With Athenian pride at stake, his words finally gained traction, and Athens went to war.
The Wages of Defeat
Combining with Thebes, Athens fought Philip at the Battle of Chaeronea in 338 BC. So decisive was the loss, Romm says of the aftermath, “Demosthenes’ grand public speeches were mostly behind him, for Athens no longer had big decisions to make.”
Aged 46, Demosthenes had no experience of war, but urging battle, he joined the phalanx. Battlefield talent, experience, and innovation lay with Philip, and besides, the 18-year-old Alexander was about to be unleashed.
The grand, sweeping mission did not end well, for Demosthenes or Athens, and there may be lessons there worth revisiting.
Leading the charge on foot, Alexander shattered the Theban Sacred Band, the legendary elite of the army of Thebes. They were holding the right flank, the flank critical to the integrity of any phalanx. The Band’s mass grave was discovered in 1880. Comprised of male couples, 254 skeletons of the unit’s 300 men were found, the bones showing deep gashes. Details are unclear, but after the battle, Demosthenes was accused of cowardice. He had choked at a critical moment once before. Sent on an early mission to talk with Philip and press the Athenian cause with the king, Demosthenes froze and was unable to speak. Puzzled by the man standing mute before him, Philip urged the ambassador to speak, but to no avail. At the battle itself, Demosthenes ran, but as Romm points out, once a phalanx broke, there was little else to do but run and hope the cavalry never caught up with you.
What happened next, shocked all of Greece. Alexander annihilated Thebes; as Romm puts it, “the leading land power in Greece was wiped off the map.”
Philip had Athenian informants who reported to him what Demosthenes was saying. He knew about the rhetorician’s contention: “Philip does not want to make you his subjects, but to utterly destroy you. He knows well that you won’t be willing to be slaves, nor, if you are willing, will you know how, for you are accustomed to rule. You will be able to give him more trouble than all the rest of humankind.” However, Philip was magnanimous in victory. He permitted Athens to retain its customs and did not garrison the city. Still, he made sure that the future was fully on display. When the Athenian remains were returned, he placed Alexander at the head of the funeral procession.
Philip was not merciful in exposing Demosthenes. In truth, Demosthenes did not grasp the scope of Philip’s ambition. Philip had far grander things on his mind than enslaving Greece; he was gracious to Athens because he wanted a quiet Greece, for his astonishing design was the Persian empire.
The Fall
Demosthenes had contacts throughout Greece and remarkably, he was the first person in Athens to be told of the assassination of Philip in 336. He took to calling Alexander “boy” in the Assembly in the belief that the rule of Philip’s son by his fifth wife was hardly secure. On the rumor of 335 BC that Alexander himself had been murdered, Demosthenes produced an eyewitness at the Assembly who claimed to have seen the felling with his own eyes. Urged on by Demosthenes and the promise of troops, Thebes revolted. The rumor was false, and Alexander’s army hurtled to Thebes. The rapidity of his army’s march spooked Athens, and they broke their promise to Thebes. What happened next shocked all of Greece. Alexander annihilated Thebes; as Romm puts it, “the leading land power in Greece was wiped off the map.” Literally, one day, a people known as Thebans existed, and 24 hours later, they didn’t.
Begging forgiveness, Athens surprisingly escaped the fate of Thebes. In light of his significant responsibility for the horror of Thebes, the influence of Demosthenes waned. The affair further illustrated that his policy choices were often poor, as was, in some ways, his character.
One upshot of Chaeronea, proposes Romm, was that the Athenian “system of governance, exemplified by Demosthenes’ oratory and the sovereign Assembly, had been bested by a warrior-autocrat.” At one level, Demosthenes cannot have been surprised. He knew well enough the power of streamlined judgment. Alongside the Assembly, in the late 340s, he had encouraged the activity of the Areopagus, an institution—sometimes defunct—that operated tribunal rule. More than once, Demosthenes turned to this body for summary judgments to dispatch his enemies. In one case, he accused of aberrant mystical rites one Theoris, a priestess. Along with her family, she was executed.
His sordid use of the autocratic Areopagus was matched by his admission to friends that he had taken money from public funds. The case is shocking. In 324 BC, a renegade administrator of Alexander’s fled Babylon loaded down with treasure. Athens gave haven but only on condition that the money be held in trust till Alexander sorted out what was going on. By the time the money was to be returned, half was missing. Demosthenes was one of the trustees, so naturally suspicion fell on him, amongst others. Publicly, he vehemently denied peculation, but a jury of 1,500 Athenians found him guilty and stripped him of citizenship. Demosthenes had to go into exile until the Assembly relented.
Between the theft of Alexander’s money and the baiting and fabrications, Demosthenes just could not stop poking the bear. When Alexander died in 323, Demosthenes argued that Athenian luck had finally changed and issued the rallying cry: “With luck on your side, free the Greeks!” Athens rebelled again, and yet again an allied Greek army was defeated. With their toleration finally worn thin, Macedonians garrisoned the city and, to make nice with its new master, the Assembly proscribed Demosthenes. He took poison before his pursuers could deliver the death blow.
A Warning
The value of Romm’s fast-paced biography includes his gloss on Demosthenes’ assertion: “But you cannot, you cannot have been wrong, Athenians, to have taken on the danger of fighting for the freedom and safety of all.” Romm comments, “He laid out a grand, sweeping mission for Athens: to advance the cause of democracy throughout Hellas and thereby safeguard the chief democratic state.”
It did not end well, for him or Athens, and there may be lessons there worth revisiting. Despite himself, Robert D. Kaplan has concluded from years of travel and geopolitical reflection that there are many valid forms of rule of law, so instead of philippics, we need prudent policies that bargain, compromise, and defend rather than meddle.