Demosthenes

And the fame of this orator penetrated even to the Persian king, who sent letters to his satraps on the coast, bidding them to offer money to Demosthenes, and to pay more attention to him than to any other Greek, since he was able to distract and detain the Macedonian[*](Philip was threatening the invasion of Asia.) with the troubles which he raised in Greece.

These things, now, were discovered at a later time by Alexander, who found at Sardis certain letters of Demosthenes and documents of the King’s generals, which disclosed the amount of money they had given him.

At this time, however, when their disaster fell upon the Greeks, the orators of the opposing party assailed Demosthenes and prepared reckonings and indictments against him; but the people not only absolved him from these, nay, they actually continued to honour him and invited him again, as a loyal man, to take part in public affairs.

Consequently, when the bones of those who had fallen at Chaeroneia were brought home for burial, they assigned to him the honour of pronouncing the eulogy over the men; nor did they show a base or ignoble spirit under the calamity which had befallen them, as Theopompus writes in his inflated style, but by the special honour and respect which they paid to their counsellor they made it manifest that they did not repent of the counsels he had given them.

The oration, then, was pronounced by Demosthenes, but to the decrees which he proposed he would not put his own name, but rather those of his friends, one after the other, avoiding his own as inauspicious and unfortunate, until he once more took courage upon Philip’s death. And Philip died, surviving his success at Chaeroneia only a short time;[*](Philip was assassinated by Pausanias, one of his royal bodyguard, in 336 B.C. See the Alexander, x. 4.) and this, it would seem, was foretold by the last verse of the oracle:—

1. Tears are for the conquered there, and for the
2. conqueror, death.