Demosthenes

Statesman and Orator

Ian Worthington

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• ISBN:
  9781134628919
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

Demosthenes is often adjudged the statesman par excellence, and his oratory as some of the finest to survive from classical times. Contemporary politicians still quote him in their speeches and for some he is the supreme example of a patriot. This landmark study of this remarkable man and his long career, the first to focus on him for more than 80 years, looks at the background behind this reputation and asks whether it is truly deserved.

1
THE ROAD TO PROMINENCE^*

E. Badian

1 Introduction

It is unfortunately impossible to do really satisfactory historical work on Demosthenes, as on many other topics in Greek and Roman history. At first sight, the evidence looks extraordinarily promising: a large corpus of speeches, more than sixty actual documents of his time; speeches and fragments by other orators, and biographies (including a long one by Plutarch and a short one in the pseudo-Plutarchean Lives of the Ten Orators); plus a body of inscriptions that, although less striking than those from fifth-century Athens, is at least technically less controverted and therefore more usable. To those accustomed to the wastes through which ancient history often has to journey, it might seem a Garden of Eden. But although up to a point this is true, there are certainly snakes about. We cannot charm them away, but must honestly confront them.

First, the text. This will no doubt be discussed by other contributors to this volume,¹ since it is basic for any historical interpretation. But we must at once note that there is no satisfactory modern text. The numerous papyrus fragments are available, but they are not much help: Demosthenes was a ‘classic’ studied in the schools of Hellenistic and Roman Egypt,² and the papyri were often (perhaps usually) produced within this process and cannot necessarily be assigned any scholarly authority. Alexandrian scholars seem to have been much more interested in editing the texts of poets than of prose writers: they normally went no further than to produce lists of what they considered authentic and what they rejected. And the manuscripts have, on the whole, not been sorted or even read since the nineteenth century: our texts, and the supposed lines of descent of the manuscripts, are based on what, in the case of other authors, have turned out to be the very inadequate readings and methods of even the best-known nineteenth-century scholars – or their anonymous students. Characteristically, the Teubner text of 1–19 dates from 1914, the Oxford text of the same speeches from 1903 (the later OCT volumes at least reach the 1930s). The Budé series, as usual of varying quality, did no original work on the texts and had completed the speeches by the 1950s. A promising Italian edition by Canfora, who had done much work on Demosthenes, never got beyond Volume 1 (1–17: 1974) and has slender textual annotation. That there was no canonical edition even in antiquity is shown by the fact that some of the speeches have reached us in two versions, one including passages omitted in the 3 other.

This brings us to authenticity.³ Again, this is not the place for a full discussion, but I shall set up an arbitrary distinction between ‘genuine’ and ‘authentic’: I intend to use the former term for what seems to be actually written by Demosthenes, the latter for what he actually said in his speeches. It will be obvious that a great deal of conjecture must enter into judgements in this area.

conjecture must enter into judgements in this area. On genuineness there is a good deal of agreement. Thus, the ‘Letter of Philip’ (12) does not even pretend to be Demosthenic, and the reply that precedes it in the manuscripts (11) is not nowadays regarded as genuine. Nor is the ‘Apollodorus archive’, not even directly relevant to Demosthenes, except that he at one time got involved in one of the cases (on both sides, as his enemies asserted). Some cases saw ancient scholars divided. Thus 7 (On Halonnesus)

Some cases saw ancient scholars divided. Thus 7 (On Halonnesus) was accepted by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, but rejected by others. Libanius thought it was written by Hegesippus, and he is now generally followed. In antiquity 17 was widely rejected and is universally rejected now. Here, there is on the whole a modern consensus; 10 (what we call the ‘fourth Philippic‘) was rejected by some ancient critics, including (it seems) Dionysius, who does not list it. Others thought it genuine: Didymus (for what that is worth: he is not a great scholar or always trustworthy) had no doubt of its genuineness. When his commentary on that speech appeared on a papyrus in 1904 (a year after Butcher had bracketed it in his OCT), many scholars were converted.⁴ That speech and its relation to 8 (On the Chersonese) do not concern us in this chapter. But it had to be mentioned because the question of authenticity (if not genuineness) hinges on passages common to the two speeches, and it must be stated in connection with this most discussed instance that the repetition of genuine Demosthenic passages in authentic speeches (as far as we can tell) can readily be paralleled in the period here discussed.⁵ We shall mention some disputed cases in this period as we come to them.

we come to them. A century ago the great German scholar Blass discovered an important technical criterion, called after him ‘Blass’s law’: Demosthenes tends to avoid sequences of three short syllables. There is no other fourth-century orator who does this to the same extent, whereas avoidance of hiatus was common at that period. (In fact, it is more marked in some others than in Demosthenes.) Blass himself used his law rather arbitrarily, accepting as genuine some speeches that contravened it but that could conveniently be written off as ‘early’. We shall see that this is not acceptable. However, the law is useful only as a negative criterion. It cannot be used as a positive one, since we simply lack evidence on oratory after the fourth century until well into the Roman Empire (when we find Aelius Aristides following this law). According to George A. Kennedy ⁶ political oratory had little scope after the fourth century and judicial speeches ‘ceased to attract the effort of first-rate minds’. This is the well-known argument writing off periods from which no evidence has survived as ‘dark ages’. In fact, any reader of Polybius will know that political speeches were plentiful, and Kennedy himself admits that ‘the educational system remained focused on rhetoric’. We must admit that we cannot tell whether Blass’s law or any other particular stylistic practice was followed during these centuries.

A more recent work submitted as a Harvard dissertation by Donald F. McCabe ⁷ found that Blass’s sorting of the corpus into speeches that did and did not follow his law was on the whole correct. McCabe added other criteria, which usually lead to the same conclusion, and used up-to-date computer technology and statistical method. His results are set out in a series of tables, which also (unlike Blass) take full account of variations in the manuscripts and different ways of interpreting short syllables and hiatus. He adds a comparison with the works of Isaeus.⁸ I shall use his results as the basis for discussion of genuineness (though they are of course irrelevant to authenticity as here defined).

As for chronology, Sealey, in a careful survey,⁹ proved that Dionysius’ dates seem to be reliable wherever we can check them. (He found two exceptions, explained by special problems.) I shall therefore follow Dionysius’ dates in To Ammaeus 1 for the speeches he lists. The first Philippic (4) will need special discussion.

2 Background and family

Demosthenes was the homonymous son of a citizen of the deme Paiania, one of the larger up-country demes. By his father’s time the family undoubtedly had property in the city. The elder Demosthe-nes was well off. His chief income was derived from a weapons factory, hence he is called ‘the sword-maker’. We are so wretchedly informed about Athenian genealogy, even in this fairly well documented period, that a good deal of conjecture must enter into any discussion of his family. I argued long ago ¹⁰ that a link can conjecturally be established among all the known bearers of Dem(o)- names in Paiania, down to the period of the elder Demosthenes. The reconstruction is complex, but I still think it highly probable, especially as it was later independently reinforced by Mackendrick, who did not know my work, with persuasive arguments.¹¹ As we both concluded, the family is probably ultimately linked with the Bouzygae, one of the most aristocratic of old priestly clans. Since (I repeat) the state of our knowledge of even leading Athenian families is a thing of shreds and patches, the argument necessarily depends on some conjecture, but no more than is generally accepted under pressure of necessity in most of ancient history. In the years since I first advanced the argument, I have seen no epigraphic find or scholarly argument that has disproved it.¹² Theopompus – not one to flatter demagogues, or Demosthenes in particular – is cited by Plutarch (Dem. 4.1) as paying tribute to his origins. The passage is worth quoting, as a document on fourth-century Athenian social attitudes:

Demosthenes, the father of Demosthenes, was of the class of gentlemen (tîn kalîn kaˆ ¢gaqîn ¢ndrîn) as Theopompus reports, but had the nickname of ‘the sword-maker’, since he had a large factory and slave workmen engaged in that trade. [Note the ‘but’.]

Demosthenes’ best-known sneer at Aeschines confirms both the statement and the average Athenian’s attitude to those who had to work for a living. After a perfunctory excuse for having to say it (which he did not), the orator continues (18.256–65) by contrasting his upbringing with Aeschines’ youthful activities. He sums it up (265) in a great climax:

You were a teacher [obviously an occupation very low in social rank!], I was attending school; you were a servant at initiations, I was being initiated; you were a public secretary [a surprising revelation of prejudice in the democracy], I was addressing the Assembly; you were a bit-actor, I was a spectator; you were hissed off the stage, I was hissing.

No one not socially fully secure could have ventured to speak like that. Theopompus’ account (and to some extent our conjecture about the family) can be regarded as confirmed.

Like some other aristocratic families, this one is not known to have been politically very active. The elder Demosthenes had amassed a tidy fortune (15 talents at his death, so Plutarch, Dem. 4.3, reports, perhaps from Demosthenes 27.4). It has been plausibly suggested that he kept it ‘invisible’ (¢fan»j: a technical term for ‘hidden from the tax collectors’) as best he could. At any rate, we know very little about any real estate, surprisingly for a gentleman. This must account for part of the trouble Demosthenes later had in convicting his guardians: it seems to have been difficult to get any solid records, and the details of Demosthenes’ estate are a favourite topic of discussion among scholars.

The orator’s mother was a foreign woman’s daughter and there was something shady about her Athenian father Gylon: Aeschines 3.171–2 says he was in charge of an Athenian garrison on the coast of the Crimea, which he betrayed; he then went back there into exile and married a very rich Scythian woman. There is certainly some truth in this. Demosthenes himself admits that his maternal grandfather was at one time a state debtor:¹³ presumably, therefore, heavily fined in court. (He does not say how his grandfather ceased to be a state debtor, as he obviously did, but his wife’s dowry may well have helped.) On the other hand, Aeschines’ invective, describing Demosthenes as not a real citizen, finds no support in the record. Even Aeschines never prosecuted him for this. His grandparents’ marriage must have taken place at the time during the Peloponnesian War when Pericles’ law on citizenship was suspended, and before it was reinstated in 403/2 (Dem. 57.30), so that his mother counted as a citizen.

His father never had any trouble under the Thirty; yet Aeschines, whose own father had to go into exile, never charges him with having been a collaborator. The family must have been unmolested because poor. This was no doubt the time when Gylon was still in exile as an undischarged state debtor. He must have come home after the restoration of democracy, with plenty of money and the legitimate wife to whom he owed it. Yet his reputation was obviously not unimpaired, and he had two daughters to place. What more obvious than to find an impoverished aristocrat who would confer status in return for wealth? This is surely a constant motive in the history of upper-class marriage.¹⁴ The elder De-mosthenes’ background begins to emerge: both old aristocrat and nouveau riche, and avoiding the tax collectors by careful investment and by keeping out of the political limelight.

To conclude this section, a few words on the family connections that seem to exist between Demosthenes and Aeschines. This will be a useful introduction to what may be developed by other contributors to this volume.

To start with the most obvious: the man who, in the absence of closer relatives (for Aphobus and his circle would obviously not do it), sponsored the young Demosthenes for admission to his deme was a local squire called Philodemus. He must have been at least a distant relative of Demosthenes in order to act in this capacity. He later became the father-in-law of Aeschines (Aes. 2.150–2). Next, Aeschines’ father bears the almost unique name Atrometus (‘Undaunted’); Aeschines’ younger brother is called Aphobetus (‘Fearless’), a name unique down to this time. Demosthenes’ wicked relative, of course, is called Aphobus (also ‘Fearless’), a unique name down to this time and for centuries after. Unfortunately we do not know the name of that man’s father who married the elder Demosthenes’ sister. The son’s name permits a guess as to what family he came from, in view of the accumulation of these unique names; but there is no proof.

Aeschines’ mother’s brother, one Cleobulus, fought under the general Demaenetus the Bouzyges in a successful naval battle (Aes. 2.78): presumably he was not a colleague (for Aeschines would have mentioned that honour) but a trierarch. Demaenetus should be Demaenetus of Paeania, related to Demosthenes’ family: the name is extremely rare before about 390. The name Cleobulus is one of two, or at the most three, instances known before the middle of the fourth century. Now, Demosthenes’ mother is called Cleobule – almost unique as a woman’s name down to the early fourth century, the period of her birth. (There may be one other instance on a tombstone.) The demes of Demosthenes’ mother and Aeschines’ uncle are different; but women normally do not marry within their own deme: the extremely rare names are worth noting.¹⁵

Nothing quite certain emerges, but the facts must be observed, and they are too striking and too numerous to be entirely due to chance. Needless to say, relatives need not always be on good terms – as is clear from many cases in the Demosthenic corpus and in Isaeus, not to mention their modern equivalents. But Demosthenes and Aeschines seem in fact to have been politically allied when the famous embassy set them at loggerheads.

3 The first steps

Demosthenes was born in or near 384 BC: ancient methods of reckoning in such cases make it impossible to calculate ages within a year, unless there is decisive evidence, and there is really none in this case. (Dionysius, a careful chronologer, miscalculated.) As we know, his father died when he was seven or so, after trying conscientiously to provide for his wife and children. Unfo...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contributors
• Preface
• Speech Numbers and Titles
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1: The Road to Prominence
• 2: Demosthenes and Philip II
• 3: Demosthenes’ (in)activity during the reign of Alexander the Great
• 4: Demosthenes and Aeschines
• 5: Demosthenes and The Social Historian
• 6: Demosthenes as Advocate
• 7: The Public Speeches Of Demosthees
• 8: Philosophers, Politics, Academic
• 9: Demosthenes in The Underworld
• Bibliography