he wished at the moment to achieve; though in fact the charges of bad faith made
against him by Demosthenes are found to be exaggerated, when they are
impartially examined. Philip intended to become master of Greece: Demosthenes
realized this early, and, with all the Hellenic detestation of a master,
resolved to oppose him to the end. Philip was, indeed, in spite of the barbarous
traits which revealed themselves in him at times, not only gracious and
courteous by nature, but a sincere admirer of Hellenic--in other words, of
Athenian--culture; the relations between his house and the people of Athens had
generally been friendly; and there was little reason to suppose that, if he
conquered Athens, he would treat her less handsomely than in fact he did. Yet
this could not justify one who regarded freedom as Demosthenes regarded it, in
making any concession not extorted by the necessities of the situation: his duty
and his country's duty, as he conceived it, was to defeat the enemy of Hellenic
independence or to fall in the attempt. Nor was it for him to consider (as
Isocrates might) whether or no Philip's plans had now developed into, or could
be transformed into, a beneficent scheme for the conquest of the barbarian world
by a united Hellas, if the union was to be achieved at the price of Athenian
liberty. It is because, in spite of errors and of the questionable methods to
which he sometimes stooped, Demosthenes devoted himself unflinchingly to the
cause of freedom, for Athens and for the Hellenes as a whole, that he is
entitled, not merely as an orator but as a politician, to the admiration which
posterity has generally accorded him. It is, above all, by the second part of
his career, when his policy of antagonism to Philip had been accepted by the
people, and he was no longer in opposition but, as it were, in office, that
Demosthenes himself claims to be justified; and Aeschines' attempt to invalidate
the claim is for the most part unconvincing.

It is not easy to describe in a few paragraphs the characteristics of
Demosthenes as an orator. That he stands on the highest eminence that an orator
has ever reached is generally admitted. But this is not to say that he was