Aristander, the soothsayer, rode by the side of Alexander, in a white robe, and with a golden crown upon his head. He looked up, and lo, an eagle was sailing over the army! His course was towards the enemy. The army caught sight of the noble bird, and, taking it for a good omen, they now charged the enemy like a torrent. They were bravely resisted, but Alexander and his troops burst down upon them like an overwhelming avalanche, cutting their way towards the tent of Darius. The path was impeded by the slaughtered heaps that gathered before them, and their horses were embarrassed by the mangled and dying soldiers, who clung to the legs of the animals, seeking in their last agonies to resist them. Darius, now in the utmost peril, turned to fly, but his chariot became entangled in the slain. Seeing this, he mounted a swift horse, and fled to Bactriana, where he was treacherously murdered by Bessus.
Alexander was now declared king of all Asia, and, though this might seem the summit of his glory, it was the point at which his character begins to decline. He now affected the pomp of an eastern prince, andaddicted himself to dissipation. He, however, continued his conquests. He marched to Babylon, which opened its gates for his reception. He proceeded to Persepolis, which he took by surprise. Here, in a drunken frolic, and instigated by an abandoned woman, named Thais, he set fire to the palace, which was burnt to the ground.
He now marched into Parthia, and, meeting with a beautiful princess, named Roxana, daughter of a Bactrian king, he fell in love with her, and married her. Some time after this, upon some suspicion of the fidelity of Philotas, the son of Parmenio, he caused him to be put to the torture till he died. He then sent orders to have his father, an old and faithful soldier, who had fought under Philip, and who was now in Media, to be put to death, which were but too faithfully executed. This horrid transaction was soon followed by another, still more dreadful. Under the excitement of wine, a dispute arose between Alexander and Clytus, the brave officer who had saved his life at the battle of the Granicus.
Both became greatly excited: taunts and gibes were uttered on either side. Alexander, unable longer to keep down his rage, threw an apple in the face of Clytus, and then looked about for his sword; but one of his friends had prudently taken it away. Clytus was now forced out of the room, but he soon came back, and repeated the words of Euripides, meaning to apply them to Alexander:
“Are these your customs?—Is it thus that GreeceRewards her combatants? Shall one man claimThe trophies won by thousands?”
“Are these your customs?—Is it thus that GreeceRewards her combatants? Shall one man claimThe trophies won by thousands?”
The conqueror was now wholly beside himself.He seized a spear from one of the guards, and, at a plunge, ran it through the body of Clytus, who fell dead, uttering a dismal groan as he expired.
Alexander’s rage subsided in a moment. Seeing his friends standing around in silent astonishment, he hastily drew out the spear, and was applying it to his own throat, when his guards seized him, and carried him by force to his chamber. Here the pangs of remorse stung him to the quick. Tears fell fast for a time, and then succeeded a moody, melancholy silence, only broken by groans. His friends attempted in vain to console him. It was not till after long and painful suffering, that he was restored to his wonted composure.
Alexander now set out for the conquest of India, then a populous country, and the seat of immense wealth. After a series of splendid achievements, he reached the banks of the Hydaspes, a considerable stream that flows into the Indus. Here he was met by Porus, an Indian king, with an army, in which were a large number of elephants. A bloody battle followed, in which Alexander was victorious and Porus made captive. “How do you wish to be treated?” said Alexander to the unfortunate monarch. “Like a king,” was the brief, but significant reply. Alexander granted his request, restored his dominions and much enlarged them, making him, however, one of his tributaries.
The conqueror, not yet satisfied, wished to push on to the Ganges; but his army refusing to go farther, he was forced to return. On his way back, he paid a visit to the ocean, and, in a battle with somesavage tribes, being severely wounded, he came near losing his life. On the borders of the sea, he and his companions first saw the ebbing and flowing of the tide,—a fact of which they were before entirely ignorant. In this expedition the army suffered greatly: when it set out for India, it consisted of 150.000 men: on its return, it was reduced to one fourth of that number.
Alexander the Great
Coming to a fertile district, Alexander paused to recruit, and refresh his men. He then proceeded, keeping up a kind of bacchanalian fête, in which the whole army participated. His own chariot was drawn by eight horses: it consisted of a huge platformwhere he and his friends revelled, day and night. This carriage was followed by others, some covered with rich purple silk and others with fresh boughs. In these were the generals, crowned with flowers, and inebriated with wine. In the immense procession there was not a spear, helmet, or buckler, but in their places cups, flagons, and goblets. The whole country resounded with flutes, clarionets, and joyous songs. The scene was attended with the riotous dances and frolics of a multitude of women. This licentious march continued for seven days.
When he arrived at Susa, in Persia, he married a great number of his friends to Persian ladies. He set the example by taking Statira, daughter of Darius, to himself, and gave her sister to Hephæstion, his dearest friend. He now made a nuptial feast for the newly-married people, and nine thousand persons sat down to the entertainment. Each one was honored with a golden cup.
On his return to Babylon, Alexander determined to make that place his residence and capital, and set about various plans for carrying this into effect. But his mind seemed haunted with superstitious fears. Everything that happened was construed into an augury of evil. The court swarmed with sacrifices and soothsayers, but still, for a long time, peace could not be obtained by the monarch.
At last he seemed to be relieved, and being asked by Medias to a carousal, he drank all day and all night, until he found a fever coming upon him. He then desisted, but it was too late. The disease increased, setting at defiance every attempt at remedy,and in the space of about thirty days he died. Such was the miserable end of Alexander the Great. His wife, Roxana, with the aid of Perdiccas, murdered Statira and her sister, and the empire of the mighty conqueror was divided between four of his officers.
The great achievement of Alexander—the grand result of his life—was the subjugation of the Persian monarchy, which lay like an incubus upon the numerous nations that existed between the Indus and the Euxine sea, and at the same time intercepted the communication between Europe and Asia. It was an achievement far greater than it would be now to overthrow the Ottoman throne, and give independence to the various tribes and states that are at present under its dominion. That he accomplished this work for any good motive, we cannot maintain, for his whole course shows, that, like all other conquerors, his actions began and terminated in himself.
The character of Alexander has been delineated in the course of this brief sketch. We have not been able to give the details of all his battles, marches, and countermarches. His achievements were indeed stupendous. He crossed the Propontis in 334, and died in 323. It was in the brief space of eleven years, and at the age of thirty-three, that he had accomplished the deeds of which we have given a naked outline. Nor was he a mere warrior. He displayed great talents as a statesman, and many of the traits of a gentleman. His whole life, indeed, was founded upon an atrocious wrong—that one man may sacrifice millions of lives for his own pleasure—but this was the error of the age. As before intimated, consideredin the light of Christianity, he was a monster; yet, according to the heathen model, he was a hero, and almost a god.
In seeking for the motives which impelled Alexander forward in his meteor-like career we shall see that it was the love of glory—an inspiration like that of the chase, in which the field is an empire, and the game a monarch. In this wild ambition, he was stimulated by the Iliad of Homer, and it was his darling dream to match the bloody deeds of its heroes—Ajax and Achilles. It is impossible to see in his conduct, anything which shows a regard to the permanent happiness of mankind. He makes war, as if might were the only test of right; and he sacrifices nations to his thirst of conquest, with as little question of the rectitude of his conduct, as is entertained by the lion when he slays the antelope, or the sportsman when he brings down his game.
Although we see many noble traits in Alexander, the real selfishness of his character is evinced in his famous letter to Aristotle. The latter, having published some of his works, is sharply rebuked by the conqueror, who says to him—“Now that you have done this, what advantage have I, your pupil, over the rest of mankind, since you have put it in the power of others to possess the knowledge which before was only imparted to me!” What can be more narrow and selfish than this? Even the current standard of morals in Alexander’s time, would condemn this as excessive meanness.
We must not omit to record the last days of one that figures in Alexander’s annals, and is hardly lessfamous than the conqueror himself—we mean his noble horse, Bucephalus. This animal, more renowned than any other of his race, died on the banks of the Hydaspes. Craterus was ordered to superintend the building of two cities, one on each side of this river. The object was to secure the passage in future. That on the left bank was named Nicæa, the other Bucephala, in honor of the favorite horse, which had expired in battle without a wound, being worn out by age, heat, and over-exertion. He was then thirty years old. He was a large, powerful, and spirited horse, and would allow no one but Alexander to mount him. From a mark of a bull’s head imprinted on him, he derived his name, Bucephalus; though some say that he was so called in consequence of having in his forehead a white mark resembling a bull’s head.
Once this famous charger, whose duties were restricted to the field of battle, was intercepted, and fell into the hands of the Uxians. Alexander caused a proclamation to be made, that, if Bucephalus were not restored, he would wage a war of extirpation against the whole nation. The restoration of the animal instantly followed the receipt of this notification; so great was Alexander’s regard for his horse and so great the terror of his name among the barbarians. “Thus far,” writes Arrian, “let Bucephalus be honored by me, for the sake of his master.”
Aristotle
This great philosopher was born at Stagira, or Stageira, in Macedonia, 384 B. C. His father, physician to Amyntas II., king of Macedonia, commenced the education of his son, intending to prepare him for his own profession; and the studies pursued by the latter with this object, doubtless laid the foundation for that lore of natural history, which he displayed through life, and which he cultivated with such success.
Aristotle lost both his parents while he was still young. After their death, he was brought up under Proxenes, a citizen of Mysia, in Asia Minor, who had settled in Stagira. Aristotle testified his gratitude to Proxenes and his wife, by directing, in his will, thatstatues of them should be executed at his expense and set up as his parents. He also educated their son Nicanor, to whom he gave his daughter Pythias in marriage.
In his eighteenth year, Aristotle left Stagira and went to Athens, the centre of letters and learning in Greece—doubtless attracted thither by the fame of the philosopher, Plato. It appears, however, that during the three first years of his residence there, Plato was absent on a visit to Sicily. There can be no doubt that Aristotle paid particular attention to anatomy and medicine, as appears both from his circumstances in youth, and what we know of his best writings. It is also probable, as is indicated by some statements of ancient writers, that for a space he practised, like Locke, the healing art; he must, however, from an early age, have devoted his whole time to the study of philosophy and the investigation of nature, and have abandoned all thoughts of an exclusively professional career.
His eagerness for the acquisition of knowledge, and his extraordinary acuteness and sagacity, doubtless attracted Plato’s attention at an early period; thus we are told that his master called him “the Intellect of the school,” and his house, the “House of the reader;” that he said Aristotle required the curb, while Zenocrates, a fellow-disciple, required the spur; some of which traditions are probably true. We are likewise informed that when reading he used to hold a brazen ball in his hand over a basin, in order that, if he fell asleep, he might be awaked by the noise which it would make in falling. Although Aristotle did notduring Plato’s life, set up any school in opposition to him, as some writers have stated, he taught publicly in the art of rhetoric, and by this means became the rival of the celebrated Isocrates, whom he appears, notwithstanding his very advanced age, to have attacked with considerable violence, and to have treated with much contempt.
Aristotle remained at Athens till Plato’s death, 347 B. C., having at that time reached his thirty-seventh year. Many stories are preserved by the ancient compilers of anecdotes, respecting the enmity between Plato and Aristotle, caused by the ingratitude of the disciple, as well as by certain peculiarities of his character which were displeasing to the master. But these rumors appear to have no other foundation than the known variance between the opinions and the mental habits of the two philosophers; and particularly the opposition which Aristotle made to Plato’s characteristic doctrine of ideas; whence it was inferred that there must have been an interruption of their friendly relations. The probability, however, is, that Aristotle, at whatever time he may have formed his philosophical opinions, had not published them in an authoritative shape, or entered into any public controversy, before his master’s death. In his Nicomachean Ethics, moreover, which was probably one of his latest works, he says “that it is painful to him to refute the doctrine of ideas, as it had been introduced by persons who were his friends: nevertheless, that it is his duty to disregard such private feelings; for both philosophers and truth being dear to him, it isright to give the preference to truth.” He is, likewise, stated to have erected an altar to his master inscribing on it that he was a man “whom the wicked ought not even to praise.”
After the death of Plato, Aristotle left Athens and went to live at the court of Hermeias, prince of Atarneus. He had resided here but three years, when Hermeias, falling into the hands of the Persians, was put to death. Aristotle took refuge in Mytilene, the chief city of Lesbos. Here he married Pythias, sister of Hermeias, and who, being exposed to persecution from the Persians, now coming into power there, he saved by a rapid flight. For the patriotic and philosophical prince Hermeias, Aristotle entertained a fervent and deep affection, and he dedicated to his memory a beautiful poem, which is still extant. On account of the admiration he expresses of his friend, he was afterwards absurdly charged with impiety in deifying a mortal.
In the year 356 B. C., Philip of Macedon wrote a famous letter to Aristotle, as follows: “King Philip of Macedon, to Aristotle, greeting. Know that a son has been born to me. I thank the gods, not so much that they have given him to me, as that they have permitted him to be born in the time of Aristotle. I hope that thou wilt form him to be a king worthy to succeed me, and to rule the Macedonians.”
In the year 342 B. C., Aristotle was invited by Philip to take charge of the education of his son, Alexander, then fourteen years old. This charge was accepted, and Alexander was under his care three or four years. The particulars of his method of instructionare not known to us; but when we see the greatness of mind that Alexander displayed in the first years of his reign,—his command of his passions till flattery had corrupted him, and his regard for the arts and sciences,—we cannot but think that his education was judiciously conducted. It may be objected that Aristotle neglected to guard his pupil against ambition and the love of conquest; but it must be recollected that he was a Greek, and of course a natural enemy to the Persian kings; his hatred had been deepened by the fate of his friend Hermeias; and, finally, the conquest of Persia had, for a long time, been the wish of all Greece. It was, therefore, natural that Aristotle should exert all his talents to form his pupil with the disposition and qualifications necessary for the accomplishment of this object.
Both father and son sought to show their gratitude for the services of such a teacher. Philip rebuilt Stagira, and established a school there for Aristotle. The Stagirites, in gratitude for this service, appointed a yearly festival, calledAristotelia. The philosopher continued at Alexander’s court a year after his accession to the throne, and is said to have then repaired to Athens. Ammonius, the Eclectic, says that he followed his pupil in a part of his campaigns; and this seems very probable; for it is hardly possible that so many animals as the philosopher describes could have been sent to Athens, or that he could have given so accurate a description of them without having personally dissected and examined them. We may conjecture that he accompanied Alexander as far as Egypt, and returned to Athens about 331 B. C., provided with the materials for his excellent History of Animals.
Aristotle, after parting with Alexander, returned to Athens, where he resolved to open a school, and chose a house, which, from its vicinity to the temple of Apollo Lyceus, was called theLyceum. Attached to this building was a garden, with walks, in Greekperipatoi, where Aristotle used to deliver his instructions to his disciples; whence his school obtained the name ofperipatetic. It appears that his habit was to give one lecture in the early part of the day on the abstruser parts of his philosophy, to his more advanced scholars, which was called themorning walk, and lasted till the hour when people dressed and anointed themselves; and another lecture, called theevening walk, on more popular subjects, to a less select class.
It was probably during the thirteen years of his second residence at Athens, that Aristotle composed or completed the greater part of his works which have descended to our days. The foundation of most of them was, doubtless, laid at an early period of his life; but they appear to have been gradually formed, and to have received continual additions and corrections. Among the works which especially belong to this period of his life, are his treatises on Natural History; which, as has been correctly observed by a late writer on this subject, are not to be considered as the result of his own observations only, but as a collection of all that had been observed by others, as well as by himself.
It is stated by Pliny, that “Alexander the Great,being smitten with the desire of knowing the natures of animals, ordered several thousand persons, over the whole of Asia and Greece, who lived by hunting, bird-catching and fishing, or who had the care of parks, herds, hives, seines, and aviaries, to furnish Aristotle with materials for a work on animals.” We are likewise informed that Aristotle received from Alexander the enormous sum of eight hundred talents,—nearly a million of dollars, to prosecute his researches in natural history,—a circumstance which did not escape the malice of his traducers, who censured him for receiving gifts from princes. Seneca, who states that Philip furnished Aristotle with large sums of money for his history of animals, had, doubtless, confounded the father and son.
Callisthenes, a relation of Aristotle, by his recommendation, attended Alexander in his expedition to Asia, and sent from Babylon to the philosopher, in compliance with his previous injunctions, the astronomical observations which were preserved in that ancient city, and which, according to the statement of Porphyrius, reached back as far as 1903 years before the time of Alexander the Great; that is, 2234 years before the Christian era.
Aristotle had, at this time, reached the most prosperous period of his life. The founder and leader of the principal school of Greece, and the undisputed head of Grecian philosophy, surrounded by his numerous disciples and admirers, protected by the conqueror of Asia, and by him furnished with the means of following his favorite pursuits, and of gratifying his universal spirit of inquiry, he had, probably, littleto desire in order to fill up the measure of a philosopher’s ambition. But he did not continue to enjoy the favor of Alexander till the end. Callisthenes, by his free-spoken censures and uncourtly habits, had offended his master, and had been executed, on a charge of having conspired with some Macedonians to take away his life; and the king’s wrath appears to have extended to his kinsman, Aristotle, as being the person who had originally recommended him. It is not, however, probable that this circumstance caused any active enmity between the royal pupil and his master; even if we did not know that Alexander died a natural death, there would be no reason for listening to the absurd calumny that Aristotle was concerned in poisoning him. Aristotle indeed appears to have been considered, to the last, as a partisan of Alexander, and an opponent of the democratic interest.
When the anti-Macedonian party obtained the superiority at Athens in consequence of Alexander’s death, an accusation against Aristotle was immediately prepared, and the pretext selected, was, as in the case of Socrates,impiety, orblasphemy. He was charged by Eurymedon, the priest, and a man named Demophilus, probably a leader of the popular party, with paying divine honors to Hermeias, and perhaps with teaching certain irreligious doctrines. In order to escape this danger, and to prevent the Athenians, as he said, in allusion to the death of Socrates, from “sinning twice against philosophy,” he quitted Athens in the beginning of the year 322 B. C., and took refuge at Chalcis, in Eubœa, an island then under theMacedonian influence—leaving Theophrastus his successor in the Lyceum. There he died, of a disease of the stomach, in the autumn of the same year, being in the sixty-third year of his age. His frame is said to have been slender and weakly, and his health had given way in the latter part of his life, having probably been impaired by his unwearied studies and the intense application of his mind. The story of his having drowned himself in the Euripus of Eubœa, is fabulous.
The characteristic of Aristotle’s philosophy, as compared with that of Plato, is, that while the latter gave free scope to his imagination, and, by his doctrine that we have ideas independent of the objects which they represent, opened a wide door to the dreams of mysticism—the latter was a close and strict observer of both mental and physical phenomena, avoiding all the seductions of the fancy, and following a severe, methodical, and strictly scientific course of inquiry, founded on data ascertained by experience. The truly philosophical character of his mind, and his calm and singularly dispassionate manner of writing, are not more remarkable than the vast extent both of his reading and of his original researches. His writings appear to have embraced nearly the whole circle of the theoretical and practical knowledge of his time, comprising treatises on logical, metaphysical, rhetorical, poetical, ethical, political, economical, physical, mechanical, and medical science. He likewise wrote on some parts of the mathematics; and, besides a collection of the constitutions of all the states known in his age, both Grecian and barbarianhe made chronological compilations relating to the political and dramatic history of Greece.
His works, however, though embracing so large an extent of subjects, were not a mere encyclopædia, or digest of existing knowledge; some of the sciences which he treated of were created by himself, and the others were enriched by fresh inquiries, and methodized by his systematic diligence. To the former belong his works on analytics and dialectics, or, as it is now called, logic; to the invention of which science he distinctly lays claim, stating that “before his time nothing whatever had been done in it.” Nearly the same remark applies to his metaphysical treatise. “But of all the sciences,” says Cuvier, “there is none which owes more to Aristotle, than the natural history of animals. Not only was he acquainted with a great number of species, but he has studied and described them on a luminous and comprehensive plan, to which, perhaps, none of his successors has approached; classing the facts not according to the species, but according to the organs and functions, the only method of establishing comparative results. Thus it may be said that he is not only the most ancient author of comparative anatomy, whose works have come down to us, but that he is one of those who have treated this branch of natural history with the most genius, and that he best deserves to be taken for a model. The principal divisions which naturalists still follow in the animal kingdom, are due to Aristotle; and he had already pointed out several which have recently been again adopted, after having once been improperly abandoned. If the foundationsof these great labors are examined, it will be seen that they all rest on the same method. Everywhere Aristotle observes the facts with attention; he compares them with sagacity, and endeavors to rise to the qualities which they have in common.”
Among the sciences which he found partly cultivated, but which he greatly advanced, the most prominent are those of rhetoric, ethics, and politics. Of rhetoric he defined the province, and analyzed all the parts with admirable skill and sagacity. His treatise on the passions, in this short but comprehensive work, has never been surpassed, if it has ever been equalled, by writers on what may be termed descriptive moral philosophy. His ethical writings contain an excellent practical code of morality, chiefly founded on the maxim that virtues are in the middle, between two opposite vices; as courage between cowardice and fool-hardiness, liberality between niggardliness and prodigality, &c. His remarks on friendship are also deserving of special notice; a subject much discussed by the ancients, but which has less occupied the attention of philosophers, since love has played a more prominent part, in consequence of the influence of the Germans, and the introduction of the manners of chivalry in western Europe. His treatise on politics is not, like Plato’s Republic, and the works of many later speculators on government, a mere inquiry after a perfect state, but contains an account of the nature of government, of the various forms of which it is susceptible, and the institutions best adapted to the societies in which these forms are established; withan essay, though unhappily an imperfect one, on education. This treatise is valuable, not only for its theoretical results, but also for the large amount of information which it contains, on the governments of Greece and other neighboring countries. Throughout these last-mentioned works, the knowledge of the world and of human nature displayed by Aristotle, is very observable; and, although his mind appears to have preferred the investigations of physical and metaphysical science, yet he holds a very high place in the highest rank of moral and political philosophers. Aristotle, it will be remembered, did not lead the life of a recluse; but, as the friend of Hermeias, the teacher of Alexander, and the head of a philosophical school, he was brought into contact with a great variety of persons, and learned by practice to know life under many different forms, and in many different relations.
Of all the philosophers of antiquity, Aristotle has produced the most lasting and extensive effect on mankind. His philosophical works, many centuries after his death, obtained a prodigious influence, not only in Europe, but even in Asia; they were translated into Arabic, and from thence an abstract of his logical system passed into the language of Persia. In Europe they acquired an immense ascendency in the middle ages, and were considered as an authority without appeal, and only second to that of Scripture; we are even informed that in a part of Germany his ethics were read in the churches on Sunday, in the place of the Gospels. Parts of his philosophy, which are the most worthless, as his Physics, were much cultivated; and his logical writings were, in manycases, abused so as to lead to vain subtleties, and captious contests about words. The connection between some of his tenets and the Roman Catholic theology, tended much to uphold his authority, which the Reformation lowered in a corresponding degree. His doctrines were in general strongly opposed by the early reformers. In 1518 Luther sustained a thesis at Heidelberg, affirming that “he who wishes to philosophize in Aristotle, must be first stultified in Christ.” Luther, however, gave way afterwards, and did not oppose Aristotle, as to human learning. Melanchthon, who was one of the mildest of the reformers, was a great supporter of Aristotle. Many of his doctrines were in the same century zealously attacked by the French philosopher, Pierre Ramus. Bacon, afterwards, with others of his followers, added the weight of their arguments and authority against him. Aristotle’s philosophy accordingly fell into undeserved neglect during the latter part of the seventeenth, and the whole of the eighteenth century. Of late, however, the true worth of his writings has been more fully appreciated, and the study of his best treatises has much revived.
The most valuable of Aristotle’s lost works, and indeed the most valuable of all the lost works of Greek prose, is his collection of One Hundred and Fifty-eight Constitutions, both of Grecian and Barbarian States, the Democratic, Oligarchical, Aristocratical, and Tyrannical, being treated separately, containing an account of the manners, customs, and institutions of each country. The loss of his works on Colonies, on Nobility, and on Royal Government; of his Chronological Collections, and of his Epistles to Philip,Alexander, Antipater, and others, is also much to be regretted. He likewise revised a copy of the Iliad, which Alexander carried with him during his campaigns, in a precious casket; hence this recension, called thecasket copy, passed into the Alexandrine library, and was used by the Alexandrine critics. His entire works, according to Diogenes Laertius, occupied in the Greek manuscripts 445,270 lines.
man
Demosthenes
This celebrated Grecian orator was born about 384 or 385 years B. C., at a period when Athens had reached the zenith of her literary, and had passed that of her political, glory. Juvenal has represented him slightingly, as the son of a blacksmith—the fact being that the elder Demosthenes was engaged in various branches of trade, and, among others, was owner of a sword manufactory. His maternal grandmother was a Thracian woman—a circumstance noticeable because it enabled his enemies, in the spirit of ill-will, to taunt him as a barbarian and hereditary enemy of his country; for the Greeks, in general, regarded the admixture of other than Greek blood, with the same sort of contempt and dislike that the whites of America do the taint of African descent.
Being left an orphan when seven years old, Demosthenes fell into the hands of dishonest guardians, who embezzled a large portion of the property which his father had bequeathed to him. His constitution appears to have been delicate, and it may have been on this account that he did not attend the gymnastic exercises, which formed a large portion of the education of the youths in Greece; exercises really important where neither birth nor wealth set aside the obligation to military service common to all citizens; and where, therefore, skill in the use of arms, strength, and the power to endure fatigue and hardship, were essential to the rich as well as to the poor. It may have been on this account that a nickname expressive of effeminacy was bestowed on him, which was afterwards interpreted into a proof of unmanly luxury and vicious habits; indeed, the reproach of wanting physical strength clung to him through life; and apparently this was not undeserved. Another nickname that he obtained was that of “Viper.” In short, the anecdotes which have come down to us, tend pretty uniformly to show that his private character was harsh and unamiable.
His ambition to excel as an orator is said to have been kindled by hearing a masterly and much admired speech of Callistratus. For instruction, he resorted to Isæus, and, as some say, to Isocrates, both eminent teachers of the art of rhetoric. He had a stimulus to exertion in the resolution to prosecute his guardians for abuse of their trust; and having gained the cause, B. C. 364, in the conduct of which he himself took an active part, recovered, it would seem, a large part of his property. The orations against Aphobus and Onetor, which appear among his works,profess to have been delivered in the course of the suit; but it has been doubted, on internal evidence, whether they were really composed by him so early in life.
Be this as it may, his success emboldened him to come forward as a speaker in the assemblies of the people; on what occasion, and at what time, does not appear. His reception was discouraging. He probably had underrated, till taught by experience, the degree of training and mechanical preparation requisite at all times to excellence, and most essential in addressing an audience so acute, sensitive and fastidious as the Athenians. He labored also under physical defects, which almost amounted to disqualifications. His voice was weak, his breath short, his articulation defective; in addition to all this, his style was throughout strained, harsh and involved.
Though somewhat disheartened by his ill success, he felt as Sheridan is reported to have expressed himself on a similar occasion, thatit was in him, and it should come out; beside, he was encouraged by a few discerning spirits. One aged man, who had heard Pericles, cheered him with the assurance that he reminded him of that unequalled orator; and the actor Satyrus pointed out the faults of his delivery, and instructed him to amend them. He now set himself in earnest to realize his notions of excellence; and the singular and irksome methods which he adopted, denoting certainly no common energy and strength of will, are too celebrated and too remarkable to be omitted, though the authority on which they rest is not free from doubt. He built a room underground, where he might practise gesture and delivery without molestation, and there he spent two or three months together, shaving his head, that the oddity of his appearance might render it impossible for him to go abroad, even if his resolution should fail. The defect in his articulation he cured by reciting with small pebbles in his mouth. His lungs he strengthened by practising running up hill, while reciting verses. Nor was he less diligent in cultivating mental than bodily requisites, applying himself earnestly to study the theory of the art as explained in books, and the examples of the greatest masters of eloquence. Thucydides is said to have been his favorite model, insomuch that he copied out his history eight times, and had it almost by heart.
Meanwhile, his pen was continually employed in rhetorical exercises; every question suggested to him by passing events served him for a topic of discussion, which called forth the application of his attainments to the real business of life. It was perhaps as much for the sake of such practice, as with a view to reputation, or the increase of his fortune, that he accepted employment as an advocate, which, until he began to take an active part in public affairs, was offered to him in abundance.
Such was the process by which he became confessedly the greatest orator among the people by whom eloquence was cultivated, as it has never been since by any nation upon earth. He brought it to its highest state of perfection, as did Sophocles the tragic drama, by the harmonious union of excellences which hadbefore only existed apart. The quality in his writings, which excited the highest admiration of the most intelligent judges among his countrymen in the later critical age, was the Protean versatility with which he adapted his style to every theme, so as to furnish the most perfect examples of every order and kind of eloquence.
Demosthenes, like Pericles, never willingly appeared before his audience with any but the ripest fruits of his private studies, though he was quite capable of speaking on the impulse of the moment in a manner worthy of his reputation. That he continued to the end of his career to cultivate the art with unabated diligence, and that, even in the midst of public business, his habits were those of a severe student, is well known.
The first manifestation of that just jealousy of Philip, the ambitious king of Macedon, which became the leading principle of his life, was made 252 B. C., when the orator delivered the first of those celebrated speeches called Philippics. This word has been naturalized in Latin and most European languages, as a concise term to signify indignant invective.
From this time forward, it was the main object of Demosthenes to inspire and keep alive in the minds of the Athenians a constant jealousy of Philip’s power and intentions, and to unite the other states of Greece in confederacy against him. The policy and the disinterestedness of his conduct have both been questioned; the former, by those who have judged, from the event, that resistance to the power of Macedonia was rashly to accelerate a certain and inevitable evil; the latter, by those, both of his contemporaries andamong posterity, who believe that he received bribes from Persia, as the price of finding employment in Greece for an enemy, whose ambition threatened the monarch of the East. With respect to the former, however, it was at least the most generous policy, and like that of the elder Athenians in their most illustrious days—not to await the ruin of their independence submissively, until every means had been tried for averting it; for the latter, such charges are hard either to be proved or refuted. The character of Demosthenes certainly does not stand above the suspicion of pecuniary corruption, but it has not been shown, nor is it necessary or probable to suppose, that his jealousy of Philip of Macedon was not, in the first instance, far-sighted and patriotic. During fourteen years, from 352 to 338, he exhausted every resource of eloquence and diplomatic skill to check the progress of that aspiring monarch; and whatever may be thought of his moral worth, none can undervalue the genius and energy which have made his name illustrious, and raised a memorial of him far more enduring than sepulchral brass.
In 339 B. C., Philip’s appointment to be general of the Amphictyonic League gave him a more direct influence than he had yet possessed; and in the same year, the decisive victory of Cheronea, won over the combined forces of Thebes, Athens, &c., had made him master of Greece. Demosthenes served in this engagement, but joined, early in the flight, with circumstances, according to report, of marked cowardice and disgrace. He retired for a time from Athens, but the cloud upon his character was but transientfor, shortly after, he was entrusted with the charge of putting the city in a state of defence, and was appointed to pronounce the funeral oration over those who had been slain. After the battle of Cheronea, Philip, contrary to expectation, did not prosecute hostilities against Athens; on the contrary, he used his best endeavors to conciliate the affections of the people, but without success. The party hostile to Macedon soon regained the superiority, and Demosthenes was proceeding with his usual vigor in the prosecution of his political schemes, when news arrived of the murder of Philip, in July, 336.
The daughter of Demosthenes had then lately died; nevertheless, in violation of national usage, he put off his mourning, and appeared in public, crowned with flowers and with other tokens of festive rejoicing. This act, a strong expression of triumph over the fall of a most dangerous enemy, has been censured with needless asperity; the accusation of having been privy to the plot for Philip’s murder, beforehand, founded on his own declaration of the event some time before intelligence of it came from any other quarter, and the manifest falsehood as to the source of the information, which he professed to derive from a divine revelation, involves—if it be judged to be well founded—a far blacker imputation.
Whether or not it was of his own procuring, the death of Philip was hailed by Demosthenes as an event most fortunate for Athens, and favorable to the liberty of Greece. Thinking lightly of the young successor to the Macedonian crown, he busied himself the more in stirring up opposition to Alexander,and succeeded in urging Thebes into that revolt, which ended in the entire destruction of the city, B. C., 335. This example struck terror into Athens. Alexander demanded that Demosthenes, with nine others, should be given up into his hands, as the authors of the battle of Cheronea and of the succeeding troubles of Greece; but finally contented himself with requiring the banishment of Charidemus alone.
Opposition to Macedon was now effectually put down, and, until the death of Alexander, we hear little more of Demosthenes as a public man. During this period, however, one of the most memorable incidents of his life occurred, in that contest of oratory with Æschines, which has been more celebrated than any strife of words since the world began. The origin of it was as follows. About the time of the battle of Cheronea, one Ctesiphon brought before the people a decree for presenting Demosthenes with a crown for his distinguished services; a complimentary motion, in its nature and effects very much like a vote in the English parliament, declaratory of confidence in the administration. Æschines, the leading orator of the opposite party, arraigned this motion, as being both untrue in substance and irregular in form; he indicted Ctesiphon on these grounds, and laid the penalty at fifty talents, equivalent to about $50,000. Why the prosecution was so long delayed, does not clearly appear; but it was not brought to an issue until the year 330, when Æschines pronounced his great oration “against Ctesiphon.” Demosthenes defended him in the still more celebrated speech “onthe crown.” These, besides being admirable specimens of rhetorical art, have the additional value, that the rival orators, being much more anxious to uphold the merits of their own past policy and conduct, than to convict and defend the nominal object of prosecution, have gone largely into matters of self-defence and mutual recrimination, from which much of our knowledge of this obscure portion of history is derived. Æschines lost the cause, and not having the votes of so much as a fifth part of the judges, became liable, according to the laws of Athens, to fine and banishment. He withdrew to Rhodes, where he established a school of oratory. On one occasion, for the gratification of his hearers, he recited first his own, then his adversary’s speech. Great admiration having been expressed of the latter, “What then,” he said, “if you had heard the brute himself?” bearing testimony in these words to the remarkable energy and fire of delivery which was one of Demosthenes’ chief excellences as an orator.
A fate similar to that of his rival, overtook Demosthenes himself, a few years later, B. C. 324. Harpalus, an officer high in rank and favor under Alexander, having been guilty of malversation to such an extent that he dared not await discovery, fled to Greece, bringing with him considerable treasures and a body of mercenary soldiers. He sought the support of the Athenians; and, as it was said, bribed Demosthenes not to oppose his wishes. Rumors to that effect got abroad, and though his proposals were rejected by the assembly, Demosthenes was called to account, and fined fifty talents, nearly $50,000, as having been bribed to give false counsel to thepeople. Being unable to pay the amount of the fine, it acted as a sentence of banishment, and he retired into Ægina. Like Cicero, when placed in a similar situation, he displayed effeminacy of temper, and an unmanly violence of regret, under a reverse of fortune.
In the following year, however, the death of Alexander restored him to political importance; for when that event opened once more to the Athenians the prospect of shaking off the supremacy of Macedonia, Demosthenes was recalled, with the most flattering marks of public esteem. He guided the state during the short war waged with Antipater, the Macedonian viceroy, until the inequality of the contest became evident, and the Macedonian party regained its ascendency. Demosthenes then retired to the sanctuary of Calauria, an island sacred to Neptune, on the coast of Argolis. Sentence of death was passed on him in his absence. He was pursued to his place of refuge by the emissaries of Antipater, and being satisfied that the sanctity of the place would not protect him, he took poison, which, as a last resort, he carried about his person, concealed in a quill.
Most of the speeches of Demosthenes are short, at least compared with modern oratory. He rarely spoke extempore, and bestowed an unusual degree of pains on his composition. That style which is described by Hume as “rapid harmony, exactly adapted to the sense; vehement reason, without any appearance of art; disdain, anger, boldness, freedom, involved in a continued stream of argument”—instead of being, as it would seem, the effervescence of apowerful, overflowing mind, was the labored produce of much thought, and careful, long-continued polish.
If we compare the two greatest orators of antiquity—Cicero and Demosthenes—it may seem difficult to decide between them. By devoting his powers almost exclusively to oratory, the latter excelled in energy, strength, and accuracy; and as a mere artist, was probably the superior. Cicero, by cultivating a more extended field, was doubtless far the abler lawyer, statesman and philosopher. Of the value of their works to mankind, there is no comparison; for those of Cicero are not only more numerous and diversified, but of more depth, wisdom, and general application. We must also remark, that while the soul of Demosthenes appears to have been selfish and mean, that of Cicero ranks him among the noblest specimens of humanity, whether of ancient or modern times.
If we compare the speeches of these great men with the efforts of modern orators, we shall see that the latter greatly surpass them in range of thought, power of diction and splendor of illustration. The question then arises, why did the orations of Cicero and Demosthenes produce such electrical effects upon their auditors? The reason doubtless was, that they paid the greatest attention to action, manner and tones of voice—thus operating upon their hearers by nearly the same powers as the modern opera. There was stage effect in their manner, and music in their tones, combined with most perfect elocution—and theapplication of these arts, carried to the utmost perfection, was made to the quick Italians or mercurial Athenians. These suggestions may enable us to understand the fact, that speeches, which, uttered in the less artful manner of our day, and before our colder audiences, would fall flat and dead upon the ear, excited the utmost enthusiasm, in more southern climes, two thousand years ago.