Speeches by statesmen (symbouloi) were concerned with questions of policy. These included war and peace, alliances, and domestic legislation.1 Athenian, and probably other Greek assemblies and parliaments, required their politicians to display a degree of oratorical ability, which seems to have excluded their reading from prepared texts.2 This differentiated them from litigants, most of whom addressed juries with speeches written for them by speechwriters.3 This difference accounts for the preservation of many more forensic than deliberative speeches. But the latter would have been of interest to writers and readers of history as well as to students of oratory. Indeed, the spoken word was an integral element of most literature, but the circumstances in which historians introduced it usually required them to exercise their imagination since they were usually not present when the speeches were delivered, and their text was not preserved. In the few cases when symbouleutic oratory was preserved, its author’s purpose may have been to publish his views, as in a political pamphlet, in order to promote his public career or vindicate his policies. Or its author may not have been a politician at all, but a sophist or a propagandist.
Of two fragmentary passages of deliberative oratory, both preserved by Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Demosthenes 3 and Lysias 32-33), the first, by Thrasymachus of Chalcedon, describes the paradoxical behaviour of politicians, who are said to yield too readily to adversity, and to quarrel with one another even when they share the same objectives, and even opinions as to the means of achieving them. The subject of the speech - the ancestral constitution - is introduced, but there are no specific details beyond that. The passage has the timeless characteristics of a sophistic exercise dealing in generalities rather than those of a live piece of oratory addressed to a particular audience.4
The fragment which Dionysius quotes from Lysias (Speech 34 in the Corpus), and which he pronounces to be ‘composed in a suitable style for an actual debate’, can be located with some precision. It is apparently addressed to an Athenian Assembly soon after the restoration of the democracy in 403. Its subject is a decree proposed by
Phormisius to restrict the franchise to those citizens who held some form of landed property. After the bloody ending of the oligarchy of the Thirty, this proposal would have inflamed strong feelings and revived dissension among the people. Yet Lysias addresses the question in very measured tones, coolly dismissing fears that the Spartans, who still garrisoned the Acropolis, would view a defeat for Phormisius with disfavour. We also know that Lysias, as a resident alien (metic) could not have delivered the speech himself. As it is difficult to imagine that a contemporary politician who opposed Phormisius, like, for example, Archinus, would have commissioned Lysias to write his speech for him, the natural conclusion suggested by logic is that the piece is a minor tract endorsing Athenian sovereignty and independence after the Peloponnesian War. It thus joins the Thrasymachus piece as a literary exercise rather than a record of what was actually said.
Delivered perhaps twelve years after Phormisius’ proposal, the speech On the Peace with Sparta by Andocides,5 concerns the ending of the series of conflicts which afflicted the Greek cities in the first decade of the fourth century. Andocides had a personal programme of political rehabilitation, and the speech has the qualities of a contribution to a live debate, being controversial and perhaps unorthodox. His aristocratic pride prevented him from advocating merely popular or traditional policies or following conventional practice. He took a direct approach, and laid strong emphasis on what he saw as pure Athenian self-interest. Whereas in the speeches which Thucydides had given to orators on all sides in the Peloponnesian War the topics ofjustice, expediency, and possibility were accorded more or less equal status, Andocides focusses firmly on the second of these, and specifically on the benefits of a negotiated peace after a period of war (3-12). He payslip service to the theme of justice by defining a just war (‘when one is either suffering wrong oneself or helping another who is being wronged’, 13), and by pointing out that the Spartans have acted with justice in victory (19). But his central argument concerns the stark realities of contemporary inter-state politics. Alliances against Sparta have proved fragile, and the nationalist pride which in the past prompted politicians to cast Athens in the role ofdefender ofthe oppressed has led to repeated disaster. Throughout the speech, Andocides dwells upon the advantages that the Athenians stood to gain from the policies he advocates; and their guiding principle is quietism, the avoidance ofconflict. Altruism and the espousal ofjust causes are luxuries which Athens can no longer afford.
A salient feature of the speech is the use of examples from history to justify his recommendations.6 Unfortunately his versions of events are riddled with inaccuracies, but their function is clear: they provide precedents for action and avoidance, the latter where consequences have been unintended or disastrous. They show how unselfish and altruistic policies have been unappreciated by their beneficiaries. The allies of Athens have consistently failed to fulfil the terms of their alliances. Such allies (Corinth and Argos), who were pursuing narrowly selfish aims, were not worth defending (24-28). The historical examples (paradeigmata) also illustrate the darker side of Athenian imperialism as Andocides speaks of the methods used: ‘partly by stealth, partly by bribery, and partly by force’ (37). They thus serve to inject realism into the argument.
Andocides’ proposals for peace with Sparta were rejected, and he and his fellow-ambassadors were exiled in 391. This could be due to two factors: the raw chauvinism which discomfited his Athenian audience because of its lack of morality, and the associations which his proposed rapprochement with Sparta had with the hated oligarchy which they had so recently expelled. More discerning speakers, before and after Andocides, would have paid attention to their audiences’ expectations. Commitment to upholding justice, whether in discharging treaty obligations or defending the weak and rectifying wrongs, was traditionally linked to the ideals of Athenian democracy. This accounts for the regular occurrence of variants of the topos of justice in the epideictic (ceremonial) oratory of the late fifth and early fourth centuries. Thucydides makes Pericles begin his Funeral Speech (2.35.3) by saying that he will try to fulfil his audience’s wishes, and it is natural to attribute this idea to Thucydides’ readers when examining his other speeches. He feels no need to give reasons for their presence in his account of the Peloponnesian War, any more than Herodotus had. ‘What was said’ was as integral to the story as ‘what was done’, as it had been in Homer. As to the content of his speeches, Thucydides tells us that he was guided by authenticity, as far as possible, and by ‘what was required’ ( ta deonta) (1.22.1). Of these two criteria, the first was usually impossible to meet because he was absent and lacked reliable report while the second certainly includes the idea of creative writing. The historian’s view of ‘what should have been said’ filled the gaps in his knowledge of what was actually said, and the material he used to do this would have included subjects and sentiments which audiences were conditioned to hear. Unlike Andocides, Thucydides had no personal axe to grind. As a historian, he knew Herodotus, whose live speech often comes in the form of debates: we even hear Xerxes’ adviser Artabarnus expressing their desirability, so that both sides of an argument could be heard (Herodotus 7.10a.1). As well as being historical in most contexts, antilogies were also a response to contemporary literary stimuli, arising in the main from sophistic influence. It is against this background that we turn to the first pair of speeches.
The address of the Corcyrean ambassadors to the Athenian Assembly (Thuc. 1.3236), in which they appeal for help in their quarrel with Corinth, begins with a strong appeal to Athenian self-interest. That theme is embedded in the opening argument, and when the ethical argument of ‘bringing aid to the wronged’ is introduced (Thuc. 1.33.1), it is sustained only briefly before reasons of advantage take over again, the foremost of these being the effortless accession of the powerful Corcyrean fleet to Athenian armaments (Thuc. 1.33.2), together with Corcyrean gratitude and a wider acclaim. The ambassadors complete this part of their argument by reminding the Athenians of the dangers of rejecting their overtures. Their treatment of the theme of justice is strictly reciprocal and legalistic: the Corinthians committed the first injustice, and the Athenians would be breaking no existing treaties by accepting the Corcyrean offer, and their speech ends, as it began, with the theme of self-interest.
The Corinthian counter-argument is studded with righteous protest, condemning Corcyrean actions as evil, vicious and unjust (Thuc. 1.37.2). They are further portrayed as devoid of respect for their colonial obligations to their mother-city, and unscrupulous in their use of specious arguments. The Corinthians urge the claims of justice (dikaiomata) based on international law (Thuc. 1.41.1). They also invoke the moral concept of past benefits to be repaid ( charis). Their case is that their claims are supported not only by the law but also by the weightier argument of moral rectitude.
The decision of the Athenian Assembly, as reported by Thucydides, was dictated by a fatalistic mind-set: ‘They thought that they faced an inevitable war with the Peloponnesians’ (1.44.2). In that frame of mind, the question of whether the war would have been just, and arguments addressed to that question, would have been irrelevant. It would be interesting to know whether Thucydides, when he composed these speeches, was thinking primarily of the state of the collective Athenian psyche at this critical time. With the transference of the debate on the war to Sparta, the Corinthians rely again on claims for justice (1.68). To the Spartans they complain of wider Athenian aggression, and broaden the argument to include an examination of the Athenian character (1.70), which is one of optimism and restless ambition, against which the Spartans are hampered by their own morality (1.71). The Corinthians, having established the justice of their cause, have moved on to argue for realism in pursuing it; and they end with a specific demand for the immediate invasion of Attica.
The reply of the Athenians to the Corinthian charges contains their own version of justice. They argue that their own past services to Greece should not be repaid with hostility: that would be unjust. It would also be unjust to impugn the expansion of their empire, since this came about not by force but by voluntary accession (Thuc. 1.75). Then, after defending their empire by appealing to natural human acquisitiveness, they make a further claim to morality by giving a number of examples of their use of their power with moderation (Thuc. 1.76-77).7
Other Thucydidean speeches explore the tensions between the deliberative topoi as well as displaying them in isolation.8 After the cautious Spartan king Archidamus has dealt in practicalities rather than morality (1.80), the Corinthians in their final speech before the declaration of war (1.121-122) introduce the theme of possibility as they weigh up the prospects of success, coupling it with that of expediency (1.124). The new theme appears again in Pericles’ speeches to the Athenians (1.141-144 and 2.62-63), where also the dilemma between justice and expediency is encapsulated in the sentence: ‘Your empire is now like a tyranny: it may have been wrong to take it; it is certainly dangerous to let it go’.
The claims of justice at the expense of expediency may be difficult to uphold in certain situations. In Thucydides 1.3.10, the Mytilenean ambassadors to Sparta argue that justice is the only firm basis for relationships between both men and states: ‘There can never be a firm friendship between men and men or a real community between different states unless there is a conviction of honesty on both sides’. Their speech traces the course of the breakdown of trust between themselves and the Athenians and blames the Athenians for it. But the latter elsewhere show that this ideal did not apply universally: in their dialogue with the Melians, they say: ‘justice is seen by reasoning men to arise from equal power to compel, and the strong do what they can, and the weak submit to it’ (Thuc. 5.89). Against this attitude it was impossible for justice to survive as a practical argument. The Mytileneans knew that their protest against Athenian injustice would probably need support from other arguments. They had available the most powerful one to put before the Spartans: ‘The greatest opportunity (kairos) yet’ (3.13, arising from Athenian vulnerability after the ravages of the plague). Kairos may be regarded as a topos in its own right, but it is also clearly related to both expediency and possibility. It assumes great importance in later deliberative oratory.
Cleon, in his speech to the second debate on Mytilene, begins by deploring the influence enjoyed by clever speakers through their sophistry (Thuc. 3.37), and he chooses for himself a forthright, brutal version of Pericles’ brand of justice as the best answer to the ‘injustice’ of the Mytileneans, which had arisen out of hybris generated by past Athenian leniency (Thuc. 3.39.4). Firm action now could meet the needs of both justice and expediency: ‘Let me sum up the whole thing: I say that, if you follow my advice, you will be acting both justly as far as the Mytileneans are concerned, and in your own interests’ (Thuc. 3.40.4). There are no theoretical abstractions here: the Mytileneans will get what they deserve and the Athenians what will safeguard their own security.
Cleon’s opponent in the debate, Diodotus, tries to set it on a higher intellectual plane. He counters Cleon’s warning against listening to sophistry by arguing that mature debate, in which the probity of speakers is not questioned, should always precede important decisions (Thuc. 3. 41-42). He then argues that the relevant question is not whether the Mytileneans are guilty, but whether it is in the Athenians’ interest to inflict the severest punishments on them (Thuc. 3.44.1). Expediency alone should be the measure of policy, and Diodotus further argues that fear of punishment does not deter those who believe they will suceed in their enterprise (Thuc. 3.45), so Cleon’s plan fails the test of expediency on that specific count. Finally, Diodotus links Cleon’s plea for justice with emotionalism.
Yet the plea for justice can still be argued when the circumstances demand it. It was a necessary topos for the Plataeans to use since they had little else to offer the Spartans when they were forced to come to terms with them in 427 (Thuc. 3.53ff.). They try to generate sympathy by relying heavily on aporia, and remind them of their well-earned reputation for justice. It is probable that Thucydides deliberately uses sym-bouleutic oratory, where possible, to characterize the morality of the antagonists in relation to peace and war. The Spartan general Brasidas (Thuc. 4.85) begins his speech to the Acanthians with some effective variants on the theme of justice, and claims that his city’s policy is aimed only at ‘gratitude, honour, and glory’ (Thuc. 4.86.5). He is even made to justify his use of force in obedience to a higher duty to liberate the Greeks, even against their will (Thuc. 4.87.2-4).
As the war becomes prolonged and embittered, justice becomes more and more irrelevant, a trend to be noted most markedly as the theatre of operations moves to Sicily. For Hermocrates of Syracuse (Thuc. 4.59-63), the sole reason for a state to wage war was to further its own material interests. Likewise, as in the present situation, it is advantageous to avoid war, compose past differences, and seek alliances (of states within Sicily), when danger threatens from outside. He further warns his Sicilian neighbours: ‘If there is anyone here who thinks he will accomplish anything by force or because of the justice of his cause, let him not be surprised when his hopes are disappointed’. This seems to be an argument against the indiscriminate use of justice as a topos.
The use of deliberative speeches for characterization, as found occasionally in forensic oratory, is an important tool for the historian, who is often right in explaining policies and decisions in terms of the natures and temperaments of the leaders who initiate them. Nicias, in his first speech in the debate on the Sicilian Expedition (Thuc. 6.9-14), is portrayed as ultra-cautious, but, more significantly, astute in understanding the mood of his audience, who are bent on war. Though famously pious himself, Nicias knows that, for them, considerations of justice are long past, so he must concentrate on the strongest possible arguments of inexpediency. In these danger figures prominently from enemies that would be left behind in Greece, quiescent under an unstable truce, and from discontented subject-allies. In this role, Nicias continues the line of literary tragic warners, begun by Cassandra and continued by Teiresias and Artabarnus, but without their religious associations. He thoroughly explores the negative side of the themes of self-interest and possibility, and concludes that a show of strength to the Sicilians, followed by departure, should be sufficient to intimidate them. After this Nicias turns to politics, describing Alcibiades and his supporters as rashly ambitious and extravagantly expansionist, and arguing the opposite case. After reading his speech, men would better understand one of the main causes of the failure of the expedition: the reluctance of its senior general to act decisively in its initial stages.
Part of the characterization of Alcibiades has already been done by Nicias, but in his own speech (Thuc. 6.16-18) the size of his ego is even more strongly emphasized. He claims that his equestrian successes at Olympia magnify the city’s standing. Accepting that unpopularity in some quarters follows success, Alcibiades nevertheless goes on to justify the acclaim he has come to enjoy - itself a piece of characterization - before going on to sound like an old-fashioned imperialist as he urges his audience to ‘make it your endeavour to advance our city further’ (Thuc. 6.18.6). After applying justice to his own career, he also reminds the Athenians that they have treaty obligations to their allies in Sicily, and questions of expediency and possibility are also considered; but the amount of discussion of them is disproportionately small compared with the space occupied by his personality. But once again the emphasis laid by the historian on a particular aspect of a speaker’s character explains the events which follow, and prepares the reader for them: Alcibiades’ proneness to youthful bravado and political intrigue made him a leading suspect in the scandal of the Hermae, which led to the removal of the expedition’s most enthusiastic advocate.
In his answer to Alcibiades (Thuc. 6.20-23), Nicias magnifies the logistical requirements of the marine enterprise, hoping to undermine his audience’s confidence. But Alcibiades has caught their optimistic mood and augmented it, so that there is no going back.
In his speech to his fellow-Syracusans, after the expedition has set sail, Hermocrates is naturally concerned with practicalities (Thuc. 6.33-65), but he must first convince them of the full extent of Athenian ambitions, and then of the magnitude of the measures needed to frustrate them. (This seems to have been necessary, to judge from the speech of his democratic opponent, Athenagoras, who seems to think that the alarms he is raising are part of an oligarchic plot: Thuc. 6.36-40.) Hermocrates must also furnish the reasons for confidence, and these include the same that Nicias had used to discourage the Athenians from sailing (Thuc. 6.33.5-6; cf. 6.20). All this involves a calculated assessment of possibilities, but he also stresses that success depends on pan-Sicilian co-operation. He envisages different strategies and counter-strategies, like a field-commander conducting a discussion with his staff. Later, when he addresses the men of Camarina, he shows himself to be the complete politician. Morality takes over, and in a number of forms, in this subtle speech (Thuc. 6.76-80). It is vitally important that they understand the true character of Athenian imperialism - that the subject’s loss of freedom is an inevitable consequence of it, whatever the Athenians may say. Readers of Pericles’ funeral speech would recall the idealistic gloss which he had given it, but he was addressing a receptive audience. Hermocrates chose to represent the difference between the two sides at a basic level:
Sicilians were mostly freedom-loving Dorians, whereas the Athenians’ subject-allies were, like them, Ionian. This also enables him to identify Syracusan interests with those of their neighbours, some of whom were suspicious of their ambitions, and to advise them that alliance with them was the right course, as well as the one most likely to succeed.
The Athenian representative at this meeting, Euphemus, puts self-interest before justice, expressly repudiating the hackneyed claims to eminence based on past services to Greece (Thuc. 6.83.2), and relying on the argument that the Sicilians generally and the Athenians had common interests. Symbouloi henceforth tend to use justice-arguments more for personal purposes, as does the exiled Alcibiades (Thuc. 6.89), than to support policies.
On turning to the speeches in Xenophon’s Hellenica,9 a change of literary influences accompanies one of personality. He honed his own oratorical skills when campaigning, and his audiences were a cosmopolitan band of seasoned mercenaries. The speeches in the first two books have a mostly judicial or quasi-forensic context, and are concerned with past events rather than future actions. In all these speeches, the theme of justice, expressed in various forms, predominates: affirmation of the law and of personal loyalty, and condemnation of lawlessness and treachery. The trial and execution of the ten generals after the Battle of Arginousae (1.7.1-34), and later that of Theramenes under the tyranny of the Thirty (2.3.23-56), were not environments in which reasoned debate and deliberation had a place. Again, when the returning democrats are addressed by their leader Thrasybulus at Phyle (2.4.13-17), the prospects of success are emphasized, but the prevailing force of the oratory is not deliberative but hortatory. After all, hortatory oratory is shown to be Xenophon’s own metier in his account of the March of the Ten Thousand, the Anabasis, where the best speeches are his own. The Hellenica shows similarity to that remarkable story as it becomes more and more concerned with the careers of individuals, who express their personalities mainly in conversations and summary pronouncements. But at the end of Book 3 (5.8-15), a speech addressed by Theban ambassadors, representing the Boeotian League, to the Athenians in pursuance of an alliance against Sparta in 395, is a full deliberative oration. They use a blend of morality and expediency, justifying their request by arguing that they had not been the Athenians’ worst enemies in the recent war, and pointing out the advantage of making a combined stand against Sparta over opposing them singly. The same blending formula is deployed by the Spartan Dercyllidas in his speech to the Abydenes (4.8.4). Cligenes of Acanthus, apprising the Spartans of the Olynthians’ ambitions in the Chalcidice in 382 (5.2.1219), invokes the topos of kairos/dynaton against the background of their activities in the area. Like Thucydides, Xenophon uses speech to convey facts which properly belong to narrative, perhaps as a means of giving variety. Among speeches which recall those he himself delivers in the Anabasis is that of Jason of Pherae reported by Polydamas of Pharsalus, which is a speech within a speech (6.1.5-12). It is much concerned with prospects of success founded on miltary prowess, and the influence that the threat of force can have. The function of some speeches seems to be to illustrate the character of the speaker, and this is done more overtly by Xenophon than by Thucydides, reflecting his greater interest in personality.10 Examples of this are the speeches of the Athenians Callias and Autocles to the Spartans (6.3.4-6, 6.79), and especially that of the famous orator Callistratus (6.3.10-17), who was greatly admired by Demosthenes. Callias reminds the Spartans of his past family connections with them, and of its standing in Athens. This fits in quite well with his argument, which explores the common ground between the two states as a preparation for a proposal of alliance against Thebes. It is also appropriate for an ambassador whose family has priestly connections to refer to mythology linking Sparta and Athens. Callias’ theme is justice: historical ties should rule out future hostilities between two states who prided themselves on their observance of religion (6.6). The next speaker, Autocles, is characterized as ‘a very dexterous orator’, but his speech makes him appear less diplomatic than those preceding or following him. Autocles bluntly accuses the Spartans of total opposition to the independence of other states, contrary to their claims (6.3.8). The speech as it stands is too short, and contains no conciliatory arguments. Perhaps Xenophon is conveying the prevailing mood against Sparta through the mouth of the most talented speaker in the debate. He records that the speech was received in silence, but adds that ‘he had succeeded in giving pleasure to those who were angry with the Spartans’. Autocles, like Alcibiades in Thucydides, has recognized and reflected the feelings of his audience. This leaves the final resumption of more conventional diplomacy to Callistratus, who eschews flights of rhetoric in favour of practical advocacy of fair dealing, and makes a point of reminding the Spartans of the expediency of an alliance, which would silence the Laconizing and the Atticizing factions everywhere (6.14), and overawe potential enemies. A nice touch comes near the end (6.16), where he deplores over-competitiveness, as exempl-fied in athletes and gamblers: parables like this are found in the best speeches of Demosthenes (9.69, 18.194, 243). If Xenophon is reporting from an actual text, as has been suggested, the content of this speech may have been known to Callistratus’ admirer, and one of his devices noted for future use.
The above debate was separated from the next by the Battle of Leuctra, a famous victory for the Thebans, which they followed with an invasion of Laconia (370/69). Procles of Phlius, acting as a spokesman for the Spartans, had an uphill task when he tried to persuade the Athenians to renew their failed alliance. These had enjoyed hearing other speakers arguing pleas for justice in the expectation that they would respond favourably to them. But the most persuasive arguments came from Procles, who began by unashamedly invoking self-interest, pointing out that they would be the Thebans’ next victims if Sparta should fall again, and they would be on their own (6.5.38-39). Justice plays its part in his argument in an interesting way: Sparta’s reputation for observing it is counted as a catalyst in the process of building alliances with her (6.5.42-43). That Procles ends an otherwise pragmatic speech with a moralistic theme which has an almost epideictic flavour as it recounts Athenian deeds of selfless valour, suggests that Xenophon, at least, regarded him as a consummate deliberative speaker, who was able to carry the most sceptical audiences with him. This ability was tested again as the Thebans prepared a second invasion of the Peloponnese (spring 369). The Spartans were by then severely weakened, but the Athenians had come to realize the enormity of the Theban threat and decided to formalize an alliance with Sparta. So Procles was to a large extent knocking upon an open door when he argued the case for it (7.1.2-11). But if the Athenians had already decided to help Sparta, there were still the terms of the alliance to be considered. Here again, it seems that the Athenians had already agreed to a division of command, so when Procles draws an antithesis between Athenian naval prowess and Spartan military supremacy, he is using a literary device reminiscent of Thucydides, but also reminding the still sceptical members of his Athenian audience of the mutual dependence of the two cities in the face of the victorious Thebans. In the end, the sceptics won the day, and the Athenians decided on independent command of all their forces, so Procles’ speech seems here to have been the vehicle for the pro-Spartan Xenophon’s own opinion. They contain the arguments which should have led the Athenians to make the right decision.
The development of symbouleutic oratory took place in a changing intellectual context in the fourth century, the flowering-period of classical Greek prose. Present in fifth century sophistic teaching, the study of politics made significant advances now through the medium of rhetoric11 It also acquired a market: aspiring statesmen were prepared to provide Isocrates with a comfortable living in return for instruction in his ‘political philosophy’. His school was famous for educating princes, but most of his known pupils were Athenian, and some of them embarked on careers in public life.12 According to the biographers, Demosthenes might have become one of them, but could not (or would not) afford the fees. Isocrates’ school was a symptom of, and perhaps a catalyst for, the growth of interest in political discourse; and he stimulated this further by circulating his teaching in rhetorical form in works which articulate his views on politics, literature, and his own individual brand of philosophy. For present purposes the main interest is upon the effect which Isocrates’ teaching and writing had on Demosthenes. They established a literary genre and opened up a stage on which he could display his talents and advance his career.
Politics lie in the background of some of Demosthenes’ early speeches which are strictly forensic: those against Leptines (20), Androtion (22), Timocrates (24), and Aristocrates (23). But the first strictly symbouleutic oration is On the Symmories (14) of 354.13 It concerned retrenchment and rearmament at a time of dual crisis. Some of the strongest members of her maritime alliance had seceded from it, and the Persian King was threatening to interfere in Hellenic affairs. Isocrates’ discourses On the Peace and Areopagiticus, composed around this time, would both have been known to Demosthenes, but the former was quietist, and the latter mainly concerned with domestic politics. Neither of these subjects seemed to him to meet the needs of the current situation. Hence a motive for circulating his thoughts on the present issue, and that may be added to a more general desire to rival Isocrates and challenge his views and those of men who had been influenced by him, like his pupil Androtion. The opening sentence of the speech reads like a thinly veiled criticism of Isocratean epideictic themes and style:
Those who praise your ancestors, Athenians, seem to me to choose a gratifying subject,
But it fails to confer any advantage on those whom they are praising... For my part,
However, I shall simply try to tell you how best to make your preparations.
Thus Demosthenes announces himself as a practical politician rather than a purveyor of epideictic rhetoric. With that manifesto to fulfil, his concentration on practicalities is predictable. Considerations of justice and honour, while important, must not impede preparations for possible conflict (14.3-4). There is also a matter of emphasis: it is unnecessary to dwell for long on arguments about justice when the King of Persia, the inveterate enemy of Greece, is the main subject of concern. The analysis of the present state of relations with him is perceptive (3-13), and from this he passes on to his proposals - the enlargement and redistribution of the tax-syndicates (symm-ories: 16-17), reorganization of equipment for the navy (18-22), manning of ships (22-23), and financial provision (24-28). He already recognizes that a major duty of a symboulos is to predict the likely consequences of his policies, and he assures his audience that these will be favourable. He also knows the need to provide a stirringly patriotic peroration (35-36). His first purely political speech contains the essential ingredients: the caution and thorough preparation that the situation requires, and the subordination of idealism to pragmatism at a time when the city was facing dangers on several fronts.
During the following year the Peloponnese became a possible theatre of war, alarming the men of the newly established Arcadian city of Megalopolis. The Spartans had become intent on recovering some of the power they had lost at the Battles of Leuctra and Mantinea. Demosthenes’ speech For the Megalopolitans (16) was his contribution to the debate at which ambassadors from Arcadia and Messenia were heard. Athenian altruism, so often trumpeted in the past, gives way for a while to hard-headed self-interest. The main reason for helping Sparta’s neighbours is to prevent her from recovering her former power and to keep both her and the Thebans as weak as possible (4-5). While paying lip-service to traditional sentiment by admitting that the Arcadians had fought against them at Mantinea, the Spartans on their side, he argues that present aggression by the Spartans should cancel this recent alliance because of the danger to future security that it posed. And how far should that aggression be tolerated? Until they had taken Megalopolis or until they had overcome Messene? After that they might be difficult to oppose (6-10). But Demosthenes knows that he cannot leave justice out of the argument for long because the policies and actions of cities are still determined by its demands. He thinks that the Spartans, notwithstanding their recent sharp practice, will recognize Athens’ past services and even help her recover her lost territory (15-18). In trying to show the wider implications ofeach policy, he engages in an intricate analysis which would have been difficult for any Assembly to follow. He asks them penetrating questions, explores many alternatives, and engages in complex ratiocination. Perhaps he actually spoke like this; more likely, the text that we have is intended for the readers of the periodic discourses of Isocrates or the dialogues of Plato. He was interested in explaining to a wider audience in time and place that politics was a complicated business. In the present case, a difficult choice had to be made between Sparta and Thebes, two parties which were both behaving unjustly (25-26): ‘Therefore it is in every way expedient that the Arcadians should not be abandoned, and that if they do survive, they should not seem to owe their preservation to themselves or to any other people than you’ (31).
Priority of expediency over justice is even more plainly dictated by the circumstances of the speech On the Liberty of the Rhodians (15). From the Athenian point of view, there could be no justice in freeing the Rhodians from the oligarchy imposed by Mausolus, Satrap of Caria, since the island had seceded from their league in 355 under the very democrats who were now pleading for restoration. There was deep resentment at Athens against them. Demosthenes begins his resolution of this difficulty with a bold captatio benevolentiae:. he pretends that the right course of action is already clear to his intelligent audience, so that his only task is to persuade them to follow it (1). Then he points out the danger of the precedent that would be set by letting Persian influence spread, whereas preventing this now would discourage future attempts at aggrandizement (9-13). Demosthenes conducts the case against justice indirectly and subtly: while seeming to show sympathy for it by saying that the Rhodians deserve to suffer the consequences of their treachery, and even enumerating examples of it, he appeals to his audience’s generosity of spirit (‘you should try to save the men and let bygones be bygones’, 15-16). Having thus ingratiated them further, he returns to the world of practical politics. A major advantage for Athens of restoring the Rhodian democracy is that democracies are easier to deal with than oligarchies (18). Even here Demosthenes manages to introduce a note of idealism: it would be discreditable to do nothing for the Rhodian democrats against a barbarian, and a woman, Artemisia, Queen of Caria (23), and cowardly to allow the King of Persia to continue his intrigues (24). This develops into an argument about the pitfalls awaiting those who pursue justice in individual cases at the expense of patriotism and a higher justice (26-29). But the main strand which unifies the speech is aversion to oligarchy. It is the main reason for restoring the Rhodian democrats. Also, the threat of oligarchy was a constant danger to the body politic of Athens herself. Its adherents are likened to soldiers who are willing to abandon their post in order to promote it (32-33). This becomes a major theme for him, and adds a distinctive sharpness to his deliberative oratory.
Demosthenes shared Thucydides’ interest in human psychology, and he was stimulated to develop it by the fact that he was an active politician who needed to interact with the men who shaped the history of his time, and also to no small degree by his own contentious character. His First Philippic oration (4) made personalization a permanent feature of deliberative oratory.14 A portrait of Philip II of Macedonia emerges early: he is an insecure and therefore dangerous tyrant (4.8), hyperactive and unstable (9). Against such an enemy there is no time to consider questions of right and wrong, and considerations of expediency require no debate. The third deliberative topos, possibility, which is mentioned by Anaximenes (Rhet. Alex. 1421b) and Aristotle (Rhet. 2.1392a), but not thoroughly explored, receives its fullest exposition in the Philippics and Olynthiacs. The Butlerian definition of politics as ‘the art of the possible’ receives a thorough exposition in these speeches. The situation in which Philip’s advances had placed the Athenians by the year 351, the probable date of the First Philippic, seemed to Demosthenes to demand immediate action. He felt that he had to engender a new sense of urgency and tried to achieve this by three means: argument, exhortation, and practical logistic recommendations, which were the bread-and-butter of the topos of possibility. He prepares his ground by assuring his audience that Philip is not as unchallengeable as he may seem, and that his real strength has not yet been tested. He is not secure in his own dominion, but his dissatisfied subjects need positive action from the Athenians to encourage their opposition to him and to take advantage of it (8-12). Demosthenes has thus put his audience in the right frame of mind to listen to his practical measures, and these form the core of the speech (13-22). They are followed by a reasoned explanation (23-27) and an assessment of their cost (28-29).
Certain stylistic features of the First Philippic are new in extant deliberative oratory. The use of direct speech (10-11: ‘Is there any news? ... Is Philip dead? ... He certainly isn’t, but he’s ill’) has occasionally been effective in forensic speeches (e. g.,
Lys. 32.9, 13, 15-17), and Demosthenes, who wrote and delivered speeches for the courts before and after he became a politician, did more than anyone else to break down the false boundaries between the genres of oratory. He also introduced literary colour by means of simile (40):
You always wage war against Philip in the same way as a barbarian boxes. For, when struck, the barbarian clutches the stricken spot, and if you hit him somewhere else, there go his hands. He neither knows how to defend himself nor how to look his enemy in the eye, nor does he wish to do either.
Here the paradox of fighting the barbarian Philip in the barbarian’s own style will not have been lost on his audience. Earlier (26) he has likened the appointment of Athenian officers to the creation of clay puppets, because they function only on ceremonial occasions. This serves to animate one of his main themes - the need for Athens to mobilize its citizen-army rather than relying on mercenaries. The urgency of this receives the required emphasis through rhetorical questions: ‘Shall we not man the fleet ourselves? Shall we not march out with at least a proportion of our own citizens in the army, now if never before? Shall we not sail against his territory?’ (44).
Philip’s ambitions were not curbed by Demosthenes’ attempts to arouse the Athenians. But when, in 349, Olynthian ambassadors came with news that he had begun attacking their city, they reacted promptly, and when Demosthenes came forward to deliver his first Olynthiac speech (1) they already had before them logistical proposals, itemized and costed (1.20). He came forward and set the debate on a higher mental plane by introducing at the outset (2) the idea of kairos (‘opportunity’),15 calling upon the Athenians ‘almost with an audible voice’. But the precise nature of the kairos requires careful analysis. Philip is clever at disguising his moves, and moreover enjoys the executive advantages of sole command; but he has shown his intentions by his treatment of the men of Amphipolis and Pydna (3-5), and this should stiffen determination to resist him, which the orator seeks to affirm by exhortation (6):
Make up your minds; rouse your spirits; put your heart into the war, now or never. Pay your contributions cheerfully; serve in person; leave nothing to chance.
This exhortation is repeated in Section 24. Before that the urgency of the situation is maintained, with further reference to Philip’s hyperactivity (12-13), leading to the prospect, in the absence of action by the Athenians, of Philip arriving in Attica (15). But Demosthenes is careful not to lead his audience into panic, and he guards against this by outlining measures to meet the danger (17-18), adding reassurance in the form of an unfavourable assessment of Philip’s position (21-22).
This is developed at greater length in the Second Olynthiac (2). Whereas the First Olynthiac has a strong hortatory element, the second explicitly eschews highly-charged oratory, and he explicitly chooses not to dwell on Philip’s successes (3-4). Instead he delivers an argument which has an old-fashioned moral tone, concluding that the wrongs which Philip has done to those who have trusted him in the past will be his eventual undoing: ‘It is impossible, Athenians, to gain lasting power by injustice, perjury, and falsehood’ (10). But those who are now threatened by him still need to know that Athens will come to their aid (11-13). The centrepiece of the speech is a critical analysis, more thorough than that in the previous speech, of Philip’s autocracy (14-21), which is represented as motivated by ambitions not shared by his subjects. Like tyrants before him, he is inhibited by his own jealousy and insecurity from using the talents of his ablest men, and so his court contains only toadies and boon-companions. These passages affirm Demosthenes’ purpose of writing instructively about politics and history, not merely preserving his own reputation. The Third Olynthiac (3) seems designed to summarize its two predecessors, while being concerned mainly with domestic politics.
After Olynthus had fallen and later still after Philip had forced upon the Athenians the humiliating terms of the Peace of Philocrates in 346, Demosthenes was compelled to rein in his aggressive instincts. The speech On the Peace (5) is characterized by small scale and subdued tone as he looks towards an uncertain future. In it he seems primarily concerned with securing his own continued role as symboulos. Nevertheless he succeeds in landing some useful blows on his opponents (5-7).
The Second Philippic (6) was delivered in response to renewed activity by Philip in the two years following the Peace of Philocrates. He had been careful to avoid overt infringement of its terms, and had even felt confident enough to complain of unwarranted Athenian hostility. Demosthenes had no alternative but to be equally circumspect. The tone of the speech is reasoned rather than inflammatory, moderating his now familiar reproaches of Athenian reluctance to act. Since there is nothing specific to counter, general charges against Philip have to suffice; and in the absence of the need for immediate measures, arguments about justice and a change in moral attitudes find their natural place. But these arguments start from the premise that there has been no change in Philip’s ambitions, only in his recognition of the Athenians’ commitment, which other states do not share, to the cause of Greek freedom (8-12). He notes that some of these states, after enjoying short-lived advantages from Philip’s injustices, have suffered betrayal and ruin after ignoring the warnings of Demosthenes (20-27), ‘so much does the pleasure and ease of the moment prevail over what is likely to be of longer-term benefit’ (27). The speech turns to the insidious and growing internal danger from men on Philip’s payroll (30-34) and ends on a note of grim foreboding, but with no concrete recommendations.
In 342 attention was drawn to the Chersonese. This peninsula flanking the Hellespont to the north was of vital strategic and commercial interest to both Philip and Athens. The latter had sent Diopeithes there with a party of cleruchs in 343/2, but left him to find his own sources of money, while Philip pursued his own interests without flagrant violations of the Peace, and listened sympathetically to complaints from those who were suffering from Diopeithes’ exactions. In the debate on this situation, Demosthenes was once more unable to point to any new infringement by Philip. He was therefore forced to argue that the fact that nothing had changed was enough to require action. The speech On the Chersonnese (8) emphasizes this in forthright language. Philip is still ‘our national enemy’ (3) and the Athenians have the ‘just and righteous task’ to defend themselves against the ‘aggressor’ (7). It contains more dire and extravagant predictions than earlier speeches, and more live speech to dramatize these and to characterize those who favour passivity. Furthermore, Philip’s plans and attitudes are represented as reality (39):
Firstly, Athenians, you must fix this firmly in your minds, that Philip is waging war with the city and has broken the peace: you must stop wrangling with one another about that.
He is ill-disposed and hostile to the city and to its very foundations - and, I will add, to every man in it, even to those who think they enjoy his greatest favour... he is set on the destruction of our free constitution.
In Demosthenes’ speeches against Philip, arguments about justice are concerned less with weighing right and wrong than with speaking with conviction and emotion from an already established position. And now, after excoriating them in 343 in his speech against Aeschines, On the Embassy (19), he is more openly hostile towards Philip’s alleged sponsors, who should be ‘abominated and crucified’ (61). Deliberative oratory has become the medium for a personal voice, and the speaker’s concern for his own standing colours his whole presentation of his counsel.
These features are very pronounced in the Third Philippic (9). Now, in 341, emphasis is laid on Philip’s actions, not his words or supposed intentions. Instances of his duplicity in the Chalcidice, Phocis, Thessaly, and nearer to Athens in Euboea and Megara, are accompanied by intense personal attack. Philip is like a spreading disease (29); and he is not even a respectable barbarian, but ‘a pestilent knave from Macedonia, whence it was not even possible to buy a decent slave’ (31). The catalogue of Philip’s incursions and annexations (32-35) serves to illustrate vividly the principle that unchallenged ambition will grow indefinitely, and to underline the argument that the problem he posed was pan-Hellenic, and required the revival of a pan-Hellenic psyche, which the Athenians once possessed. This was the point of the example of Arthmius of Zelea (41-45), who forfeited his rights because he conveyed Persian gold not to Athens, where he was a privileged resident, but to the Pelopon-nese. The Athenians regarded his offence against other Greeks with the same abhorrence as if it had been against their own city.
A united Greek front, for which Demosthenes worked assiduously in these years, was essential, because Philip was a new kind of enemy who could implement the innovations that had been made in the arts of war (47), in respect of timing, armaments, tactics, and training (48-52). Embedded in this description is another factor which Demosthenes would not let his audience forget, and which had the effect of diluting the efforts of every state affected by it: ‘most disasters are due to traitors, and none is the result of a regular pitched battle ’ (49). The hyperbole underlines the importance he attaches to this factor. All countermeasures against Philip, however well conceived, will be futile if‘the enemy within’ is given free rein (53-55). Their activities have ruined other states (56-62), frustrating the good politicians’ plans for their defence. They can do this because they can offer seductive inducements to the citizens which apparently free them from their patriotic duties; whereas the true statesman ‘cannot say something agreeable, because he is obliged to consider the safety of the state’ (63). The nautical imagery in the following parable is apt, being addressed to an audience whose navy is now useless against a terrestrial super-power (69):
While the vessel is safe, whether it be a large or small, then is the time for the sailor and the helmsman and everyone in his turn to show his mettle, and to take care that it is not capsized, deliberately or not, by anyone; but when the sea has overwhelmed it, zeal is useless.
Demosthenes now introduces his own measures with a solemn promise that they are for the true benefit of the city (70). Alliances remain for him the key to success, but they must be matched with domestic self-sacrifice by men whose past history had singled them out as champions of Greek freedom (74-75). The Third Philippic is Demosthenes’ most accomplished speech; it was also his most effective in that it led to provision and action, and it finally established him as Athens’ leading statesman as the city prepared for the final showdown with Philip.
Two phases may be discerned in the development of symbouleutic oratory. In the fifth century, historians provide the only surviving examples of it. For Thucydides, speeches were intellectual exercises which served to describe the reasoning that led to decisions, to provide literary variety and dramatization, portraying the prevalent mood, and showing the interaction between his speakers and their audiences. Most of Xenophon’s speakers would have been recognizable to those who attended political assemblies in the first half of the fourth century. But the wider circulation of political discourse, stimulated by the school of Isocrates, together with the multiplying dangers and emergencies that threatened the city-state, produced, in the speeches of Demosthenes, and to a lesser extent those of Aeschines, Lycurgus, Hyperides and Dinarchus, a new kind of symbouleutic oratory. It drew upon a rich and colourful treasury of literary devices to arouse patriotic emotions, and also sympathy with the speaker, as he justified his policies even when they led to disaster, and at the same time invited his readers to think more deeply about their history and about their future decisions as participants in their democracy.
World History
