PHOCION, DEMADES, PYTHEAS
Though as a rule an orator could not hope to be successful in
fourth-century Athens without a professional training, yet there were at
times men who, either through strength of character or natural gifts,
could dispense with a rhetorical education.
Foremost among the men of the peace party was Phocion, an aristocrat by
instinct if not by birth; a man admired alike for ability and integrity,
so that, though he was no great orator, his speeches always commanded
respect. He aspired, like Pericles, to be both a statesman and a general,
and in the former capacity had at times to speak in the assembly. Various
anecdotes in Plutarch point to his efforts to attain a conciseness
which was almost laconic. His utterance was as trenchant as it was
brief—Demosthenes called him ‘the knife that cuts my speeches down’; and
he had a lively wit, which must have pleased his hearers even though
his policy was unpopular. On one occasion, when the people applauded
him—which was rare, for he neither courted nor expected popularity—he
paused in his speech and asked, ‘Have I said something absurd?’
An unsparing critic of the democracy, as he was nevertheless their
faithful servant, he continued, from the purest motives, to urge peace,
though the best years of his life were spent in war. He was respected
for his high character by Philip and Alexander, and acquiesced in the
government instituted by Antipater in 322 B.C., but fell a victim to the
hatred of the extreme democrats, and was forced to drink hemlock, at the
age of eighty years, in 317 B.C.
Demades, his contemporary, and a member of the same political party,
is a perfect type of the vulgar demagogue. He depended for his success
on a lively wit and a never-failing flow of words. After the battle of
Chaeronea, where he was taken prisoner, he became an avowed agent of
Philip and Alexander.[393] In consequence of his supposed services to
Athens after the destruction of Thebes, he attained great popularity, his
statue was erected in the market-place, and the more material benefit
of perpetual meals in the Prytaneum was decreed to him. He was put to
death by Cassander, the son of Antipater; his fellow-citizens melted
down his statues and applied the metal to even baser purposes.[394] His
recorded sayings show imagination—‘Alexander is not dead; if he were,
the whole world would stink of his corpse’; or again, ‘Macedon without
Alexander would be like the Cyclops without his eye’;[395] finally,
Athens is to him ‘not the sea-fighter whom our ancestors knew, but an
old woman, wearing slippers and supping barley-water.’[396] For the high
opinion entertained of his eloquence we may refer to the verdict of
Theophrastus—‘Demosthenes is an orator worthy of Athens; Demades is on a
higher plane than Athens.’[397] We have no further means of forming any
conception of his style.
Pytheas, another orator who raised himself by his talents from a humble
position, was much younger than the previous two, who were about
contemporary with Demosthenes.[398] He was one of the prosecutors of
Demosthenes in the affair of Harpalus in 324 B.C. Soon after the death
of Alexander he was banished, took service with Antipater, and worked as
his agent in the Peloponnese, using his influence to thwart the efforts
of Demosthenes towards united resistance. After this we lose sight of
him. He is said to have had talent, but to have been handicapped by lack
of education. He was the coiner of the famous phrase about the speeches
of Demosthenes, that they ‘smelt of the lamp,’ and another equally apt,
though less familiar, that Demosthenes ‘had swallowed Isaeus whole.’[399]