In Our Time - Demosthenes' Philippics

Episode Date: December 15, 2022

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the speeches that became a byword for fierce attacks on political opponents. It was in the 4th century BC, in Athens, that Demosthenes delivered these speeches against the tyrant Philip II of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great, when Philip appeared a growing threat to Athens and its allies and Demosthenes feared his fellow citizens were set on appeasement. In what became known as The Philippics, Demosthenes tried to persuade Athenians to act against Macedon before it was too late; eventually he succeeded in stirring them, even if the Macedonians later prevailed. For these speeches prompting resistance, Demosthenes became famous as one of the Athenian democracy’s greatest freedom fighters. Later, in Rome, Cicero's attacks on Mark Antony were styled on Demosthenes and these too became known as Philippics.The image above is painted on the dome of the library of the National Assembly, Paris and is by Eugene Delacroix (1798-1863). It depicts Demosthenes haranguing the waves of the sea as a way of strengthening his voice for his speeches.With Paul Cartledge A. G. Leventis Senior Research Fellow at Clare College, University of CambridgeKathryn Tempest Reader in Latin Literature and Roman History at the University of RoehamptonAndJon Hesk Reader in Greek and Classical Studies at the University of St AndrewsProducer: Simon Tillotson

BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. Thanks for downloading this episode of In Our Time. There's a reading list to go with it on our website, and you can get news about our programmes if you follow us on Twitter at BBC In Our Time. I hope you enjoyed the programmes. Hello, in the 4th century BC in Athens, Demosthenes delivered speeches so powerful that he became famous as one of that democracy's greatest freedom fighters.

His target was the tyrant Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great, who to DeMothonese appeared a growing threat. In what became known as the Philippics, DeMotsonis tried to persuade Athenians to act before it was too late, and eventually he succeeded, even if the Macedonians later prevailed.

With me to discuss DeMothones-Philippics are Paul Cartledge, A.G. Levantis Senior Research Fellow at Clare College University of Cambridge, Catherine Tempest, reader in Latin literature and Roman history at the University of Rohampton, and John Hesk,

reader in Greek and classical studies at the University of St. Tandrus. Sean Hask, what do we know of Namastodese's early life? Well, Demosthenes was born in 384 BC in classical Athens. Athens is a democracy at this time, and he's born into an extremely wealthy family. His father is called Demosthenes as well, Demosthenes Senior. And his father owns a weapons factory making swords and knives. his mother is from a well-known Athenian family as well, but later opponents of Demosthenes would accuse her of actually having Scythian,

that is non-Athenian ancestry. Scythians were a nomadic tribe in the north of the Black Sea. We don't know for sure if that's true. It may just be a slur against Demosthenes because you were supposed to have pure Athenian parents. But anyway, so Demosthenes is born into a world of privilege, but things take a time for the words for him. him quite quickly because at the age of seven his father dies and he falls under the guardianship

of his father's two nephews and a family friend and they are supposed to look after the family and marry his mother and his younger sister respectively but they actually seem to have at best mismanaged the estate and at worst actually stolen from it so when demosthenes comes of age in 366 BC, he actually launches a series of prosecutions. There are five prosecution speeches which he delivers himself in order to get his property back. He doesn't get much back, but he does actually make a reputation for himself through those speeches.

Does this sort of kickstart his career? Absolutely, yeah. So we can't be sure, but I think that probably he publishes those speeches in order to show everybody what a great speechwriter he is. because he's lost a lot of money from his estate, so he needs to make money another way. So what he does is he starts writing speeches for people. But if you wanted to say something, Natham,

you didn't go to a lawyer, you did it yourself? Absolutely, yeah, yeah. You had to deliver the speech yourself. So what wealthy Athenians did is they hired a speechwriter, and that's the career that Demosthenes starts. How did he become so prominent? Well, what he starts to do, as well as writing speeches for private cases to do with property and family law,

he starts to write speeches for prominent politicians, and those politicians often, they often attack each other through the law courts. So what they do is they accuse each other of having made illegal proposals to the Assembly or of taking bribes, and he starts writing speeches for prominent politicians. What knowledge is essential for him to do this so well? Well, I think partly, it's a really good question. partly he has a great rhetorical knowledge he clearly trained in rhetoric

when he was a teenager, when he was a boy but partly he seems to very quickly have acquired an astute political understanding of both international affairs and also of contemporary internal politics in Athens At the start he was thought to have to be a weak speaker with a weak voice and he couldn't pronounce one of his words properly

and that seemed changed, but how did he change it? Well, I mean, there's this story, it's in Plutarch, who is a biographer in the Roman period, there's this story that he actually had a lisp and that he had a very weak voice and that he would practice speaking by putting pebbles in his mouth. Now, that story may or may not be true, but it's quite well attested,

supposedly a contemporary of Demosthenes, Demetrius of Phaleron, told someone, this and then it goes to Plutok. And it may be that he put these pebbles in his mouth to alter the shape of his mouth in order to get rid of the lisp. And there are other stories as well that he built a kind of chamber for himself to practice in and not let himself out of the chamber until he sounded better and also took advice from contemporary actors as well. So there are all these stories and I think some of them are probably true, to be honest. There does seem to be a lot of evidence and contemporary evidence where politicians accuse him.

of practising and toiling away and pre-pre-preparing and writing out his speeches. So I think to compensate for a sense of weakness, he probably wrote his speeches out, practiced them, honed them, and that's where all these stories come from. Excellent. Thank you very much. Catherine Tempest. Why was the ability to give speeches so important? So Athens at the time was very much an oral community and without the kind of media that we have today,

it was really important to make a speech to get your point of view across. Now, there were several... Where did they make these speeches? There were several places in which speeches were made. One of them was the assembly, the assembly of every male citizen, which met probably about 40 times a year, would be a really important place to get your point across. Now, we know that there were regular speakers.

These are the men who engage in politics. And demosthenes at the First Philippic actually says, I'm speaking first today. So it is a very regular occurrence of someone to speak in the assembly. There's also the council, the Boulé, on which adult male citizens would take it in turns to serve, a council of 500. So you needed to get your view across there. This was dealing with things about the finance of the city, looking after the orphans.

You name it. Daily business was conducted. They would put the agenda out. The ecclesia, the assembly would meet to vote on those matters or to hear speeches. And then, of course, as John has already alluded to, the law courts were a really important place because a man was expected to speak on his own behalf. So we've heard a little bit about how he learned. and to give speeches. Do we know who his teacher was?

We hear about his teachers, yes. Now, there are two aspects to Demosthenes' training. One is the oratory and one is the theory of rhetoric. The theory of rhetoric had been taught from the middle of the 5th century BC. And we know that Isocrates was a popular teacher at the time, but he couldn't afford the lessons of Isocrates if Plutarch tells us. No, never mind. He got a bit ritual later, didn't he? We got a bit ritual later.

We know that he did have a tutor. We hear of stories of him asking his tutor to smuggle him into trials. We also hear that he learnt with Issaas, who would be an obvious candidate as a teacher because he is specialised in inheritance cases, so we can see why he would have turned to someone like Isias to learn the art of rhetoric from. But it links in with what was being said earlier about him working at it.

Yes. Again and again, working at that speech or those speeches. Working rather interesting, is it? I suppose it became known as too much of a swat. We have a lot of evidence, as John suggested, that shows that he did work at his speeches. Very interestingly, a collection of introductions to speeches survives that shows that he always wanted to make a really good first impression in the assembly.

So these collection of poemia, the introductions to the speeches, survive. So we know that even when he was probably having to speak extemporaneously, he had always made sure he got in on a winning note because he really liked to prepare. Cicero is supposed to have been influenced by. When was Cicero? How much later and how was he influenced? So Cicero is operating in the period we call the Roman Republic

and he's living between the years of 106 BC to 43 BC. A long time afterwards. It's a long time afterwards. We're talking several hundred years. So how did you know what he was talking about? What were the records that he had at his disposal? So Demosthenes published his speeches. Ah, good.

And these speeches have survived, along with other speeches from the Attic Orators, which people like Cicero learnt from. Now, if you wanted to learn oratory and rhetoric in the Romanos, period, you still went to Athens. It'd become very customary even to take a gap year, as we'd call it today, but you studied the speeches of Demosonies. These were the model and the template for good, effective oratory. So Cicero would have read the speeches. He certainly uses features from them in his own practice, and then he adapts them to his own time.

They're wonderful speeches, I mean, especially the third, which I've been reading again this morning. Extraordinary. Extraordering works, aren't they? Anyway, we might come on to that, analyse it more. Paul, Paul Cartlens. Hello. What were the political, major political instabilities facing democracy in his youth? Well, that's a very good way of put it,

because, of course, they were both internal and next on. It's extremely complicated. We're in the 300th, the 4th century, as we call it BC or BC. Roughly five political entities are of salience. Four of them are Greek, one of them non-Greek, the Persian Empire. And Demosthenes was born, as Catherine has said in 384 BC, which is a couple of years into the what's called King's Peace, the first compact which affected typically all mainland Greek states whether or not they had actually sworn an oath to abide by the terms. It was presided

over by Sparta, the then great power of mainland Greece, together with King Artexerxes II, who, though at a great distance, was very interested in getting back the Greek cities that lay on his western frontier, that is Western Turkey today, on the shores of the Aegean, which he'd lost, his ancestors had lost in the 5th century. That's two. So we've had Sparta and we've had Persia. The other three. Athens, of course, a great power in the 5th century, utterly devastated by losing a major, major, war at the end of the 5th century recovering and desperate to get back to its naval empire, which had both on the one hand lubricated its democracy at home and also extended its power abroad and therefore increased its self-image and prestige. Then we have also two others.

Thebes. In between Sparta and Athens in the 5th century BC, going to rise up because of Sparta and Athens still clashing in the 4th century BC, briefly having a moment of glory, being the most powerful single city in all mainland Greece until, and then this is why they called Philippics, because they are speeches by Demosthenes against Philip, Philip the second king of Macedon. And Macedon's rise is the absolutely key feature of Demosthenes' youth.

So Demosthenes born in 384, So when he first hits Philip, Philip is rising in the 350s, Demosthenes is in his 20s. How did, Master's Don't become such a threat so quickly to others? Partly, I mean, one must, I'm not myself as a historian, a great believer in the great man theory of history, but. They do keep turning up. I was going to say, some great men are greater than others, and Philip and his son, Alexander, were two of the greatest. So, Philip was exceptionally savvy. His kingdom was fissile, Fisiparous, very often kings were murdered.

It was a combination of different canton, so basically divided into two, upper, lower. A predecessor of Philip had united them first, but still they were relatively weak. Long comes Philip. Combination of social, political, military, economic reforms. He grabs territory with a new model army that then funds, yet more army developments, yet more extension. He funds technological developments, especially in siege warfare. He's a brilliant diplomatist, i.

crooked as hell, if I'm allowed hell. He'll tell somebody, he'll tell the Athenians, I'm going to do this and then he'll do the other. Just to give you one example. And Demosthenes, completely to his credit, recognizes Philip's strength. He doesn't belittle Philip. He hates Philip, but he doesn't belittle him. So actually reading Demosthenes speeches,

you learned quite a lot about why Macedon under Philip became great. Yes. All the things you said about, Philip, the biggest thing was this sort of command of strategy in that area. He just picked up city after city after city. With the aim, it seemed to be, in retrospectively, to encircle Athens with hostile cities. Yeah, not quite encircle, though, of course,

you're right in championing Thebes against Athens. That was getting very close to Athens. One of Demosthenes' big shes, Dix is, for goodness sake, Athens, if you don't go up north and stop him in his tracks up north, that is, Maston's right at the northern shore of the Aegean, it spreads across to the Balkans onto the very far west, it goes over onto the Adriatic, on the east, it goes over eventually under Philip to the Black Sea, I mean, he's quite extraordinary. So Demosthenes' first line is get up there, Athens, to stop him coming further south. But as you, you know, he's. You know, he's

say, Melvin, he picks off one by one, Athens is allies and then, of course, sometimes Athens enemies, but nevertheless mainly it's what the Athenians are worried about is, first of all, amphipolis. That is absolutely the key. Then Olympthus. These are the two

big Greek cities in the north that matter most to Athens. Thank you very much. John Hask. Let's talk at his first speech. First speech against Philip. We've had the speech about him getting his money back. What are its strength? That's a good question. I'm glad you frame it as strengths because some people point out that the speech didn't achieve what it aimed to.

Because what Demosthenes is trying to do is to persuade the Athenians to create a massive rapid reaction force based in Athens. Yeah, absolutely. Like, you know, 50 triremes, cavalry. Triams being battleships. Being battleships. And of course the context is this, Athens can't really afford this. but he proposes it anyway and the other thing he suggests is a sort of standing force in the north near the areas that Paul was talking about in order to sort of what we would now call interdict or Harry

or kind of provide a deterrent to Phillips sort of expansionist operations in the north and the Athenians don't go for that but I think almost I wonder whether Domostinies actually knows that they're not going to go for it But what he's doing is he's building up the threat by saying this is what we need to counter him. So he builds Philip up. To counter Philip, yeah.

Yeah. But at the same time as he builds Philip up, he does a quite a clever job of saying to the Athenians, the only reason why he's doing well is because you guys have been caught napping. You haven't been thinking ahead. You're sitting on your hands. And if you just actually anticipate his moves, you will actually be able to counter him. And, you know, that's... A good analogy with a boxer there.

Pardon? A good analogy. Oh, yeah, the boxing analogy. Well, I'm glad you've mentioned that, Melvin, because I'm going to read that bit out. What he says is he says, Oh, good. Those who wage war properly must anticipate events rather than following them.

And then he accuses the Athenians, even though they've got all of these hot plights and cavalry and money, he says you don't use them as you should, but instead you wage war on Philip in the same way that a foreigner fights in a boxing match. So when one of them is struck, this is foreigners, he always moves his hands at the spot where he's just been struck

and then when he's hit somewhere else he moves his hand there. So this is a brilliant analogy because it's actually shaming the Athenians. The Athenians hate non-Greeks, hate foreigners and he's saying you are fighting Philip like a foreigner was. You're acting like barbarians, not like great kind of leaders of Greek civilization

like Athenians should be. The interesting about the speech is most of the the way through is that he's somewhere between chides and scolds them, doesn't he? It tries to shame them. Yeah, I think that's right. And I think that's another strength of the speech that he's trying to shame the Athenians, but he's also actually

establishing himself as a politician who is fearless, who isn't afraid to criticise the people, to criticise the people that could potentially move against him. Why is he going to away with it? Well, that's a really good question. I think he gets away with it partly because he's not

probably as lone a voice as he tries to make himself out to be. So he stages himself as this sort of person with great foresight, the first person to really see the threat of Philip. But what we know is actually there were other politicians who were worried about Philip, but some of them wanted to go about things in a different way, perhaps, you know, perhaps try and forge alliances with Philip,

keep him contained and all the rest of it. So he's perhaps not as loner voice as he makes himself out to be. Catherine, do you think he displays his oratorical skills from the beginning in that first Philippic? We see a lot of features in Demosthenes' first Philippics that will carry over into the subsequent speeches. For example, he really starts with a big paradox. The worst aspect of your history, Athenians,

actually holds out the best hope for the future. And he says, what do I mean by that? He says, well, I'll tell you. And this is a great way of engaging the audience's attention, right? He says, as John has just explained, you've done nothing so far, you've been caught napping. but that's good because had you actually been trying to fight Philip

you'd have done a terrible job so actually, and I'm broadly paraphrasing here actually this is a great thing because now if we fight we can only get better so that is one of the ways in which he works and he seems to be a rather common way of, not common, he's nothing common about

monotonous, but a regular way he chooses his arguments, doesn't he? Absolutely he repeats that verbatim in the third Philippics, so he obviously liked it So we see him really showing that he can capture the audience's attention. And what he also does in this speech, which he carries over, I think, from his forensic speeches, is he really focuses on a single argument. Now, a lot of speeches in the 4th century had to sort of throw a number of arguments at something

and something will stick. Whereas what Demosthenes does is he goes back to the versions of speeches he's read in his readings of the Cucydides, for example. And he sees speeches that focused on expediency. What is to our advantage? And he really presses home that point. And actually that advantage becomes a necessity in his hands. We need to fight Philip. And that is a feature that will recur in his Philippics later on as well.

And we see the sort of the seeds of the later rhetoric developing already in his first Philippic. Poor, poor Godlitt, in response to this first terrific speech, nothing happens. No, nothing happens. Well, that's partly because he's remember only 32, something like that. early 30s. Is it them or him? Sorry, is it them or him? Well, the reason that nothing happens, is it his fault?

Or are they now so sunk in good estimation of themselves that they can't be moved by mere... Well, there are counter-arguments, and Demosthenes, I think, was particularly foresighted, and most people typically aren't. And therefore, what he was immediately reacting to, I think there's a kind of conversion in Demosthenes, around about 352 to 351.

This is the speech in 351 is the first Philippic, namely that Philip has suddenly lightning speed, first of all gone far east to the Black Sea and threatening the Athenians grain supply from actually Ukraine and Crimea of wheat. On the other hand, having gone that far east, suddenly he's back and he's coming south and he's threatening Athens by going through the pass of Thermopylae in focus, which the Athenians did block. So it's not the case the Athenians never did anything, but it's the case that Demosthenes is, as John was saying, enormous armament that he's advocating in great detail.

He goes into precise figures in a way that he doesn't later, because by then he's established, he doesn't need to demonstrate his command of the detail. And so it doesn't have any effect, and I think A40 or I look forward a few years, still, when even more obviously Philip was threatening Athens' interests by destroying an ally of Athens up in the north, Olympus, still they don't do anything.

So sort of a fortiori in 351, he doesn't yet have the critical mass of ordinary Athenians, the ones who are going to actually have to fight on his side. So there are counter-arguments, and there is, well, apathy is what Demosthenes calls it. It's a little bit strong. It's a sort of calculation that probably, yet, we don't absolutely need to do anything. And if we did, we were taking a risk that was not worth taking. Do you take that up?

Yeah, I mean, I think another reason possibly why they don't take it up is that in the first Philippic, one of the things that Demosthenes recommends, he says, don't just rely on one of your generals leading mercenaries, because that's normally how you do it. You use foreign mercenaries, non-Athenian mercenaries, Greeks, but, you know, there. And he says, no, you need to mix yourselves in. Actual Athenians need to be part of this fighting force. And of course, that's potentially a kind of big commitment and quite scary proposition that the Athenians themselves have to go up north and fight.

Catherine. The other point in this proposal, which is fundamentally unworkable, is that A, Athens doesn't have the money. But B, he suggests we'll just pay them expenses. It's fine. They can make up the rest of the money themselves, i.e. by plundering. without harming the allies he's quick to sort of add in so the proposal that he's making is completely unworkable because they just don't have the money to pay

are they aware of their weakness are they ashamed and embarrassed he plays on that quite a bit in his speeches basically he doesn't use this word he uses much better words it's basically you ought to be ashamed and embarrassed about yourselves look at you sitting and not stirring at all you used to have free speech you don't have really free speech

anymore in politics in a quiet wonderfully elegant way. He lacerates them. He does, although, I mean, I think one thing he does as well is say, yes, you know, you're not getting your act together, you're not sort of anticipating Philip. But he also actually, he does this in the second

Philippic, he says one reason why Philip is courting alliances with cities like Argos and Messini is that you Athenians, he knows you Athenians have a reputation for standing up against invaders and tyrants, and he cites the Persian wars. So in the 5th century, Athens leads the charge against the Persian invasion, and he often brings this up. So on the one hand, he's saying, you know, you're not getting your act together,

but on the other hand, he's saying, look at your glorious history, you can, you know, you can do this, and actually Philip knows you can do this, and this is why he's kind of subtly surrounding you. You know, in the first Philippic, he says he's, It's like he's surrounding you on all sides as if with nets while you sit and away. So it's a balancing act. It's berating them, but also trying to remind them that they of their past glories and their own cleverness. He says, you're as clever as Philip, and you can do this, you know.

Is it sort of Paul, you want to go out. I just want to add a little detail that, DeMusson, is when actually delivering the real speech on which the written version is based, above him is the Acropolis. and that's loaded with temples, extraordinarily wealthy, big, massive. The Parthenon's the most famous, but the Erexion, the Athenoneiki. Why are they there? Because in the 5th century, Athens had the money to build them. And so you look up there, and it's a little bit shaming.

And there are those who think that to have had a great past is not necessarily always the great thing. Catherine, let's turn to the Third Philippic, which is considered to be his greatest speech, and it's wonderfully written. You can't imagine anybody writing a better speech about any political issue now. You really can't. Hardly that means it's brilliantly translated, but he had to be there in the first place. It's terrific. Was this a key speech in the debate between freedom and tyranny, between Athens and Macedon?

Was this particular speech that important? The Third Philippic is arguably his greatest oration, and arguably the best in history. It is a phenomenal piece of craftsmanship and rhetoric, which really hits on all the themes that he's already touched on, but in an expanded version. It has the most xenophobic attack on Philip that you could possibly imagine. It's all punches are out on these. He talks about Macedon as being a place that you wouldn't even buy your slaves from, you know, and now here we are bowing to Philip. He's very much seeing Philip as this foreign force, and he wants to make sure that he is distinguished as not Greek. Now, the Macedonians certainly had a language of their own, what that considered it of.

I'm not sure we know in very good terms. But Philip admired Greek culture. He spoke Greek. And he was charming, and these are the threats that actually Demosthenes wants to counter the most. So he portrays him as a foreigner of the worst type. from the worst place, and really what he wants to get across in this third Philippic is there's a difference between his words and his actions, and it's the threat of tyranny. And he uses example after example to expose this danger that Philip presents.

So he will do so with examples of when Philip has broken his word. Then he'll do so with a concrete image. Imagine siege weapons are at your wall. Just because they're not firing doesn't mean you're not at war. and then he'll go to an abstract principle. If a man has got weapons ready by which he can capture me, he is at war with me. Because he needs to convince the Athenians of the imminent danger

that they are going to become the slaves of this foreign tyrant. And he uses those similar strategies of shaming them, reiterating again and again the danger of Philip. It takes a bit of nerve, doesn't he? He stands up there on his own, a sort of middle-aged chap, on reducing it. A great orator, stands up there, as a great orator

and just goes for them. I mean, this is an entire community. Many richer, more powerful than he is and so... But he goes, John, do you want to add to what's been said on that one? Yeah, I mean, I think by the third Philippic in 3-4-1, he's got his wind in his cells because Philip has started to show himself to be treacherous, really, to, you know,

what Philip does is go around the Greek world. He talks about this in the second speech, well actually, that Philip has a tendency to get friendly with cities and give them territory, look after them, and then turn on them and invade them. And in the second speech, he says that this is what Philip does to Olympus, one of these cities that Paul was talking about in the north. And it's the same in the third Philippic. But the other thing about the second and the third Philippics that I think is important as well

is that Demosthenes doesn't just build up a picture of Philip as a traitor, but he says we've got traitors amongst us. So he implicitly accuses other politicians of actually being in Philip's pay, of being bribed by Philip, and therefore of giving advice, bad advice to the assembly, which they follow, and then kind of, you know, wrong-futs them tactically. Actually, there are agents of Philip within the democracy. So he's actually playing on, not just paranoia about Philip encircling Athens and wanting to dominate the whole of Greece, which is what he's saying by the third Philippic, but also that actually Philip has planted agents in every city, including Athens itself. And of course, you know, one of his targets here is his great rival, Iskines. And Iskines and

Demosthenes have a sort of parallel tussle in the law courts, which, you know, starts in, it starts in 343 with Demosthenes accusing Iskines of acting treacherously on this embassy that results in a temporary peace treaty with Philip, which in the end Demosthenes doesn't like. So I think that's important as well. It's not. just about Philip the enemy, it's about the enemy within, and that's very much coming across in both the second and the third speeches. You've got something

scribble on a bit of paper that. Is there anything from the Third Philippic, which wouldn't be too long, it would be telling. Well, really, it's just to back up what, one of them is just to back up what Catherine was saying about the racism of the speech in a sense. You know, he says,

you know, he says, Philip's not only not a Greek and in no way related to the Greeks, but he's not even a foreigner from a land which it's honourable to say one belongs and then he, you know, and all that. But he also has this interesting image of, he says, look, with Sparta and Thebes and Athens, we've fallen out with each other, we've had our differences, but we're like the wayward sons, the squabbling sons of a family, whereas Philip is like a slave of that family. And so it's very much, again, trying to sort of say, well, look, we have our differences, but we're Greeks,

but Philip is the kind of interloper or a slave in the family. So, you know, there's a couple of examples. But he also, actually, in the Third Philippic, really, really contrasts a kind of the moral situation of Greece as a whole. He says Greece has now sold its values to the highest bidder through bribery and corruption. And this is a contrast with the politicians of the 5th century who stood up to Persia,

who wouldn't have sold their values for money. So he brings that big contrast as well. You've been getting encouraging chuckles from Paul all the way through what you've said. So I think we should turn the chuckles into speech. Well, I'll give you just another analogy. Remember you quoted from the first Philippic, the boxer analogy. Well, as well as the one that John just mentioned, there's the ship of state analogy. And so what Demosthenes says to the Athenians imagine a ship in terribly rough water.

and the water's already coming over the gunwls, well, it's too late. You know, you've got to be prepared. So one thing perhaps we've missed out is that he's constantly emphasizing not only do your duty, i.e. serve, pay your taxes, but be prepared. And, well, he argues in the Third Philippic, we are prepared. But John mentioned the piece of Philocrates, 346. this is actually the diplomatic framework

within which the Third Philippic and the Second Philippic and the trials of Iskinnes and of the supporter of demos. These are all happening in these five years, so that's the diplomatic background. Catherine, was he thought of at the time when a lot of people would be giving speeches and emotions

as the outstanding man, was he the man to follow, the man to watch, the man to imitate? He was always seen as one of the best, but there were others who would compete for the rival claim of being the best orator. D'Amades being one of them who was seen as a supreme orator of his time. I think where Demosthenes stands out was in the delivery. He really had what later commentators called the Thunderbolts. He had the passion.

He really brought the emotional appeals home so that people would really vote with their hearts. We mentioned the hate speech that he whips up or the nationalistic pride. He knew which buttons to press. And I think in the assembly, he really started to get his way from the mid-340s onwards. There's a massive anti-Macedonian revival. And this really explains part of the greatness of the Third Philippic and its success was that people were now on board. But you say buttons to press as if it's a kind of slightly,

you didn't mean this is my not interpretation, reaction, as if it was a sort of mechanical thing. But he passionately believed in this. I think the passion in his speeches, as far as I can tell from reading them, is what matters as well as everything else. I mean, he means it all the time. You can tell, can you? I mean, you read plenty of speeches, what I do anyway.

And you think, well, big dead. But not with him. No. I mean, he's out there to convert you. Absolutely. And we might say he's exaggerating the threat of Philip to some extent. Yeah, much people who want you to change you exaggerate. Exactly.

It's not just a rhetoric of crisis. It's a rhetoric that is seeking to instill a sense of crisis. He is in large part creating the urgency because he's so frustrated with the speakers that are advising to hold off and the Athenians who are voting not to do much yet or when they do decide to do something, it's inadequate. So they're never quite supporting and they're never quite pushing far enough. So he really does believe in it,

but he's also hammering home these points with an urgency because he has to exaggerate and really fire people to act. I think what Catherine says is absolutely right and I think another way in which we've talked a lot about the analogies and the imagery he uses and we sort of take that for granted but actually Demosthenes is particularly good at that because he's not coming out with metaphors and analogies all the time

he picks that he chooses them very carefully and he selects the moment when he's going to use them and of course that's a great skill in political communication to sort of reduce a really complex sort of political and diplomatic situation and reduce it to saying, you know, actually the ship is about to be overwhelmed guys, you know. So he's a consummate political communicator

through the use of these images, I think. Yes, I mean, if auditors are judged by the memorability of lines, he's way ahead of the field, but we remember Churchill saying this and Robespier saying that and so on. But he did that in paragraph after paragraph, didn't he? Yeah, I think that's right. and of course, you know, a lot of... You know, there's a lot of quotes in the later biographies

from what he's supposed to have said, which we don't actually have in the speeches because clearly there were many more speeches he gave than survive, you know. So he is a bit of a soundbite merchant, yeah. How successful was he thought of in his own day? I think one measure of the way he's seen in his own day is that despite the fact that in the end, Athens loses to Philip at the Battle of Chironia,

The Athenians at first don't seem to hold it against Demosthenes. Demosthenes has encouraged this. He's gone and got an alliance with Thebes. Athens, there's a disaster. Athens loses. But instead of blaming Demosthenes, the Athenians actually ask him to give the funeral speech over the war, Deb, which was a great honour.

And Demosthenes clearly was proud of it. He talks about it in a later trial speech. And he's awarded, both before Kaironaire and afterwards, he's awarded honorific crowns, which are, you know, which a very prestigious thing to be awarded by the democracy. And that's in recognition of, really, I think, recognizing that, you know, at that point, the Athenians think, oh, my God, he was right. So at that point, he's very much, I think, well regarded by the Athenians.

And not all that well regard. I mean, he thought, well, you tell me, bless you, Paul, he thought he was going to be murdered, so he killed himself. Right. Well, then moving on. So there's a long period before his death, so about 13 years. But why did he decide to take his own life? He decided because the Athenians resisted always, Macedon, always resisted.

They refused ever to cooperate. And when Alexander died unexpectedly early in 3-2-3 in Babylon, the Athenians actually mistakenly rose up in rebellion because they were in effect subjects of Macedon and they lost both on land and at sea. Demosthenes, therefore, is going to be public enemy number one. The Macedonians want revenge for all the trouble Demosthenes has caused them for the last, what, 15 years at least, 20 years getting on.

We're into 3-2-2 BC. He flees Athens and he flees to an island called Caloria, which is modern Greek poros. And there, as you say, he takes his life. and suicide in antiquity carried no stigma of a religious or moral kind. He would have been cut to pieces by his Macedonian assassins. He chose to die the way he wanted to do in his own choice, in his own place and time, heroically. Was his death at that time thought of in the terms you've just described?

It would have been because not quite a martyr, but because Athens in 322 ceased to be a democracy, the Macedonians ended the Athenians' democracy, which is exactly what Demosthenes had warned the Athenians that the Macedonians would do. They were therefore in a very bad position politically, and therefore any Democrats, such as Demosthenes, were heroic martyrs. Catherine, can you briskly be coming to the end now?

Tell us what impact Demosthenes has had on the succeeding orators. We've mentioned, Cicero. Do you want to say more about him and then push on? Sure. Greek and Roman writers of rhetoric are united in seeing Demosonies as the greatest orator of all times. And they sought really to say what made his oratory so effective. Now, one theory was very much about the style of his speech. He could combine speaking clearly in the plain style with all the charm of rhetoric in the middle style, but he could bring out those passionate thunderbolts in the grand style. And that seems to have been the consistent

theme in later commentator's analyses, that he could really have that variety of speech, pull out all the stops, go between them really cleverly. But he had that variety of speech, which he always had of the consistent message. And so the clarity and the various ways in which he'd express it, going from passionate to very calm and rational, really stood out as something that later orators wanted to emulate. And it's partly because of Cicero's championing of Demosonies that later in sort of the 4th century AD when you've got Martianus Capella trying to sort of create a whole encyclopedic knowledge of eloquence that Demosonies becomes a cinnamon for eloquence.

Along with Cicero, they are the two great voices. One died as the last great voice of the Athenian democracy. Cicero died as the last great voice in Republican. I was just going to bring it up to the 19th century. I'm not looking for the 19th century for a support. That was a century in which we Brits, I mean, my hands. Wanted to be classists. We are the classists.

But so to the Germans. So there's a sort of ding-dong. But politically, the Germans, as far as the Brits were concerned, were as it were, the Spartans of antiquity, whereas we, free, democratic, it's slightly contradictory with the empire, but we'll let that pass. We, the Brits, are the Athenians.

Now, what were we doing? We were resisting tyrants. And so we are terrific supporters of Demosthenes, and therefore he becomes a hero of the nations. There was a Victorian English series of biographies called Heroes of the Nations. Demosthenes was chosen to represent a... There was no Greek nation. Don't worry about that.

But Demosthenes was a hero. Final word? John? Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. I mean, actually, I mean, he's also... Domosteus is also really a hero of the American Revolution against British rule.

So all of the founding fathers, the American Revolutionaries, in the 18th century. You're talking about Lincoln now as well? Well, probably Lincoln. Yeah, yeah. I was thinking of people like Jefferson and John Adams. They all study, you know,

when the American universities, the American colleges are founded, they all study Demosthenes at college, and then they really kind of see themselves as in the mold of Demosthenes fighting tyranny, in this case the Brits. Which was the king of Britain. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Tarrant, George III. Well, thank you all very much. That was great. Thank you very much. Catherine Tempest, John Hesk and Paul Cartlidge, and our studio engineer, Sue Mayo, next week. It's the Challenger voyage of 1872 to 1876, a four-year round-the-world scientific expedition known as the Apollo Mission of the Victorian era. No, now is that? Thanks for listening.

And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material from Melvin and his guests. That was great. Thank you very much. You can't go. I can just sit back now. I've done my bit. I'll start up with you, Clarendon, what would you like to have said that you didn't say? I was sort of thinking of what really made Demosonese's character so compelling in the speeches. And we were talking about how he sets himself up as his frank advisor to the Athenians

and how the people must have reacted. And it's interesting, I suppose, that in the first Philippic, he takes that really dangerous stance of criticising people. which he seems to backtrack on to sort of start giving them a more sense of pride in their history. And I suppose from my point of view, I always wonder, do you learn from your speeches? What we don't get in the speeches of Demosthenes is actually how people reacted. Sometimes in the law court speeches, we will get Iskinis telling us

that people reacted by booing or something along those lines. And it's always really fun when you're reading a speech to try and work this out for yourself. So, for example, that line from the first Philippine's, that he reuses in the Third Philippic, clearly that worked because he uses it again. And yet the strategy of shaming the people. That was the paradox of what's our worst aspect in the past holds out our best hope for improvement in the future. It's almost cut and paste in modern violence.

And so that must have worked. So we can inject a sort of sense of the audience must have loved that. He must have figured out that that worked. And likewise, did he realize that really alienating your audience and telling them off in quite such, such stark terms was not the way to get them on your side in future. The next speeches make really clear that these are about Philip. The first words in the speeches are Philip, and they go in on the attack. And he saves all of that harsh energy for Philip and then the pride for the Athenians.

And we see how he mixes those emotions. The first Philippic is a bit frenzied. You feel that he's kind of lost the plot. By the second, he reserves the emotion. for an attack on Philip towards the end, whereas in the third, again, he's learnt to sort of introduce the emotions, like ripples of waves, throughout the speech. And so it's really interesting, I always think, to sit back and reflect on what has he done differently from speech to speech, and what does that tell us about how the Athenians were actually

reacting to what they heard? Yeah, it's funny. Catherine's talking there about, you know, thinking about Demosthenes as a kind of skilled orator over time. and I think another question that if we had more time we could discuss is well what's we have more time none this is you know what's the relationship between writing a speech out

having a whole written speech and a live debate because we don't have any other we don't have any of the surviving written assembly speeches other than Demosthenes is there's no other examples and you know later biographers are interesting on this because he's

seems to have been criticised for that but he also seems to have had a repost so there's one quote where a politician called Pythias says, your speech is smell of the lamp, i.e. you're burning the midnight oil. And Demosthenes apparently kind of quipped back, well, you know,

you burn the midnight oil but for different reasons, i.e. you're kind of having illicit sex with someone in the middle of the night. And so these speeches are very polished and they're long but it sounds as as if actually real debate would have involved a lot more kind of heckling and back and forth. And we tend to think of these things as set

pieces, but actually there probably was in reality more back and forth, more real debate. And I think Demosthenes was probably quite good at that because there's some evidence, you know, Plutarch says, oh, he kind of prepared, but he was also good at the one-liner at the kind of responding to heckles and things like that. I think we need to imagine a much more of a rough and tumble debate than necessarily these long, polished speeches give us an impression of. Well, I imagine they must have been much shorter than their published version. But I, as a historian, historian of ancient Thebes, would have liked much more chat about the role of Thebes in the first half of the 4th century

leading into the fact that Demosthenes, who was the, as it were, diplomatic representative of Thebes in Athens, Thebes had become a democracy. This is absolutely crucial. He wouldn't have wanted to be allied with Thebes if Thebes had been an oligarchy. And so Thebes, having been top dog for ten years, Philip takes over. And what we didn't quite bring out was that by the time of the Second Philippic,

by the time of the Peace of Philocrates, actually Philip was already the biggest player in Mainland Greece. He already was the most powerful single power. in main degrees. Therefore, Demosthenes was really up against it, in a different way from in the first Philippic, he's saying, we've got to act, or Philip will become the biggest power. By the time of the Second Philippic, Third Philippic, he is that. So anyway, the great thing about Thebes was Philip turned against Thebes, having supported them, first of all, and Thebes turned against Philip. Demosthenes secures an alliance. Now, the Thebans, though they would not like

Philip might well have thought, yeah, but he's got this fantastic army. Yes, we've got good cavalry, but his is even better. His numbers, because Macedon's huge, by comparison with the territory of Thebes and Beosha, a territory even of Athens, he's going to outnumber us. They've been drilling professionally for nearly 20 years since he became king in 359. We're going to get smashed. That's what a sane, Thebes. and would have thought. But against that, and if I'd been one of them, he's going to come down anyway.

Are we just going to roll over and allow him to steamroller us? Are we going to take him on? And so they did. And it was a terrific battle, but it was a total victory for the Macedonians. I suppose one question we, I mean, coming out of what Paul said there, one question we didn't get into is the bigger, you know, there's one view of Demosthenes that he was foresight, he was. foresighted and, you know, perhaps Athens could have won if only the Athenians had sort of seen the writing on the wall quicker. But, of course, it's a completely opposite view, which says that Demosthenes actually, you know, provokes Philip. And, you know, you don't buy that one.

I think these are people who don't like Demosthenes because of what he stands for in other ways. So in other words, then and still today, there are very conservative people today. Right. I'm not going to name names nor political affiliation. but who see Demosthenes as a rabble-rouser, a demagogue, the wrong sort,

whereas a sensible Democrat would have seen that Philip was not such a threat. You shouldn't, as it were, poke the bear, because then the bear will behave in a way he wouldn't have behaved otherwise. I think Demosthenes was totally right. Philip was going to do what he did. And the question was how and when.

And that, I think, is why Demosthenes was given. a free pass by the Athenians. Two names just mentioned as names in the whole of discussion. First, did Plato have any connection? I would say absolutely not. I mean, partly because he was a radical anti-democrat. He had a school which produced a number of people, including one's Demosthenes mentions,

who'd pop up as Tarants. And Philip may or may not have actually paid for them, but Demosthenes says they are pro-Philip. in the Peloponnese on the island of Ubeah and therefore a direct threat to Athens and democracy. So, you know, I think there, as it were, congenitally and ideologically completely at odds. And then Alexander got one mention. Was there any more to be said about it? Oh, Alexander.

Well, I mean, Alexander's interesting because we've talked about how Demosthenes gets a free pass. But there is this interesting thing that happens when, Alexander takes over after Philip's assassination, which is that there's this treasurer of Alexander called Harpalus who defects to Athens. From Babylonia, from way out east. Yeah, yeah. Why does he?

Well, and he comes to Athens. And a lot of money. And he's got loads of money with him. And this causes real trouble in Athens because de Bostody says, right, we'll keep hold of him and we'll put his money in the treasury and all of this. but then suddenly Demosonis finds himself prosecuted because Demosthenes gets accused of basically misappropriating some of that money. And that's the first time Demosonies goes into exile.

So there's a sort of picture here. We get a little glimpse here of the way in which politicians are using an affair like that to really try and steal a march on each other. And it's interesting. Hyperides is the guy that prosecutes Demosthenes. Who had been an ally of Demosthenes against Phillips. So there's this thing. where you get these very opportunistic political moves

against the backdrop of Alexander. Did Alexander actually do anything when his father was going around winning everything? Was he at his father's side learning, that sort of thing? That's a bit of a boy's own question. Well, no, it's not a boy's own question because actually it sealed the fate of Hellas, that is the Greek world,

insofar as Alexander then transforms it after Philip, which I don't think Philip would have done. But Philip was often not in his capital, which was Pella. He was often away. And when Alexander was just 16, this is occasion where Philip goes off and he leaves Alexander as regent, age 16. Alexander seizes the opportunity to take on

a neighbouring non-Greek people, defeats them, and then where their capital city was, he transforms it into Alexandrupolis, not modern Alexandroupos, but just, Just like Philip had named Crenides Philippi, he names a city after himself, age 16. And so when does he emerge on the Panhellenic stage at Carinear. And there is a dispute exactly what role Alexander played. I believe he probably was commander of the crack cavalry,

which smashed the opposing Greek troops at the Battle of Carineur. But as I say, following Philip's lead, he was quite gentle to Athens. didn't terminate the democracy, didn't impose a tyrant on Athens or a garrison, all that happened when the Athenians revolted after Alexander's death, and then Athens ceases to be a democracy. It becomes a cat's paw, a garrison town with a tyrant. Anything more to say before you depart your several destinations? I was just going to add that we haven't really touched on Plutarch's life of Demosonies in any great detail,

and that's a great source for anecdotes. Things like in the Harpalus affair, he talks about how Harpalus looks at Demosthenes eyeing up a golden cup, and he can tell someone's character, by the way, they look at gold. And you really get a sense of a lot of the anti-Demosthenic rhetoric coming through, because Plutarch had done his research. He had a lot of sources, and we get that other side of Demosthenes' character through a reading of Plutarch's lives. The other side being, in brief? The people who hated him.

Yeah, that he's greedy, you know, that he's venal and greedy, you know, There is this other... So a hypocrite. Yeah, there's this other tradition, you know. And actually the Tory, you know, in the 18th and 19th century, the Tories that don't want Britain to become a democracy pick up on this. And they say, Demosthenes is not a model. You know, democracy produced Demosthenes,

and he was a coward and greedy and all the rest of it. Where did the coward come from? Battle of Carineer, one of his enemies at the time. And he responds to this in the Crown speech, alleged he ran away. when the battle was lost because he was 46. I mean, that's getting on to fight. If you lose, running away

from people who are going to kill him. He was heading back to Athens to organise the defence of Athens in defence. There is a defence. You think we would have thought better if he hadn't. He said, no, I'm not going to run away and say something. I'm just going to stand here and be cut to pieces. What would you have talked about then for? Well, there was another speech which was

famous actually the most important Athenia politician we haven't yet mentioned after the Battle of Karine. It was a man called Lycurgus. And one of his speeches survives, and it's against a man whom he accused precisely. The charge against him was Lipostratia, which is running away from the battlefield. And so Demosthenes is alleged running away. It's not unimportant. In other words, it's a good one to get it.

If you don't like Demosthenes, if you want to be nicer to Maston than Demosthenes wants you to be, then you have a go at Demosthenes on that charge because it's likely to have impact. Well, I can see our producer pouring the ground outside. So thank you all very much and here comes Simon with his irresistible offer. Does anyone want tea or coffee? Yes, please.

Yeah, coffee, coffee. I have tea, thank you. Tea, please. Coffee, two teas. Thank you very much. Thank you all very much. Oh, wow, I'm starving. In our time with Melvin Bragg is produced by Simon.

Officials say a case of mass hysteria broke out at a girl's school. What starts with the strange illness spreading through a school leads us to consider one of the most profound issues of our time. Young people are so concerned about the state of the earth and then they are labelled as hysterical. I'm Matthew Seid and in the new season of my BBC Radio 4 podcast Sideways, I'd like to tell you stories of seeing the world differently and explore the ideas that shape our lives.

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