astonishing career of conquest. It was soon clear that he was
to be the rival of Athens for the headship of Greece. Demosthenes became
the champion of the Athenian cause, and henceforth, so long as he lived,
used all his powers against Macedonian aggressions. Most of his best
speeches relate to this issue. His eloquence, argument, and personal
influence won nearly all the Grecian states to a coalition that, for a
time, successfully forbade Philip to set foot in Greece proper. Only
Thebes and Sparta stood out, and when Philip, daring them all, ventured
south and conquered Phocis, even the Thebans yielded to Demosthenes's
pleas and joined the league. In vain, however. At the decisive battle of
Chaeronea, B.C. 338, Philip was entirely victorious. The allies fled,
Demosthenes himself among them, leaving Philip to become at his leisure
the master of every city so far south at least as the northern confines
of Sparta. He might have realized his wish at once but for his excesses.
He drank himself drunk, dancing over his slain foes, and beating time in
maudlin song to the caption of the Athenian decree which Demosthenes had
procured against him. But it is said that when sober again he trembled
to remember "the prodigious power of that orator who had obliged him to
put both empire and life on the cast of a day." Two years after the
battle of Chaeronea Philip is stricken down by the assassin Pausanias.
Alexander mounts the throne, a youth of twenty. Greece flies to arms
against him, not dreaming that a greater than Philip is here. Marching
quickly against the Thracians and the Illyrians, who at once succumb, he
volts to smite rebellious Thebes and Athens, whom Demosthenes's
incessant appeals have again induced to take the field. In spite of him,
the Athenians now basely desert the Thebans, leaving them to stand the
entire fury of the war alone. Greece is thus soon quieted again, and the
boy warrior, leaving Antipater behind with a sufficient home guard,
crosses to Asia never to return. Once, later, when Harpalus, Alexander's
renegade treasurer, came to Athens with his bags of Asiatic gold, and
again after Alexander's death, it for a moment seemed possible to throw
off Macedonia's yoke. Each time the orator led in an attempt to do this,
but failed. Fined fifty talents for taking some of Harpalus' gold, he
fled from Athens, living for a time in Troezen and AEgina. The new hope
for the former Greek regime evoked by Alexander's death w