Demosthenes, Speeches 1-17

4. FIRST PHILIPPIC

⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠ introduction The First Philippic marks a turning point in Demosthenes’ political career: although he had made a glancing reference to Philip in an (arguably) earlier speech (15.24), this is the first speech in which he directly addresses the danger to Athens arising from the growth of Macedonian power. From now on, all his surviving deliberative speeches are characterized by ancient critics as “Philippics ,” that is, as speeches concerned with policy towards Philip.¹ Dionysius of Halicarnassus dates the speech to 352/1, but his testimony is not entirely straightforward,² and the question of its¹See Harding 2006: 244: Demosthenes “became a one-issue politician in 351 with the First Philippic” (at any rate, so far as the surviving speeches are concerned). We know four of the deliberative speeches (Dem. 4, 6, 9, and 10) as Philippics, but ancient critics also regarded Dem. 1–3, 5, [7], 8, and 11 as “Philippic.”²Dionysius (First Letter to Ammaeus 4) identifies the speech not by its title or opening words, as is his usual practice, but by its content (“a speech before the people on the dispatch of the mercenary force and the squadron of ten triremes of exiles [generally emended to “ten swift triremes] to Macedonia ”). Later in the same work, however, he mentions a speech, which he calls the “fifth Philippic,” on “the protection of the islanders and the cities of the Hellespont,” and gives as its opening words the first words of 30. This latter speech he dates to 347/6 (10). It appears therefore that he regarded 4.1– 29 as a separate speech, delivered in 352/1. His division of the single speech that we know as the First Philippic into two shorter speeches is not found elsewhere and is regarded by scholars as mistaken. 4. FIRST PHILIPPIC ⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠ 4. first philippic 69 date continues to be debated.³ One important passage for dating the speech is 17, where Demosthenes refers to Philip’s “sudden campaigns to Thermopylae and the Chersonese and Olynthus ” (cf. 41). The events to which he refers are as follows. First is Philip’s march southwards in summer 352, after his victory over the Phocians at the battle of the Crocus Field, towards the strategically vital pass of Thermopylae, where he was thwarted by an Athenian expeditionary force that had occupied the site.⁴ Second is his expedition to eastern Thrace in autumn 352 (though some scholars have argued that this occurred in 351: see 3.4n).⁵ Third is an early incursion into the territory of the Chalcidic League in northern Greece, perhaps on his return from Thrace.⁶ Other references in the speech—to Philip’s raids on Athenian territory and shipping (34), to his letter to the Euboeans (37), and to his operations in Illyria (48)—are not closely dateable, although the Illyrian campaign probably occurred in early 351 (see 1.13n). The speech also refers to rumors that Philip is ill or dead (11); it is clear from the sequence of events reported at Dem. 3.4–5 that these rumors were circulating at some point before the dispatch from Athens of a force commanded by Charidemus in September 351. In short, a date in late 352/1, that is, summer 351, is possible, but we cannot exclude the possibility that Dionysius is mistaken and that the speech belongs in the following Athenian year, 351/0.⁷³See most recently MacDowell 2009: 211–213. ⁴Demosthenes describes this as taking place “recently” or “the other day” (prōēn; 17), but this adverb is too imprecise in its range of meaning to allow any conclusions to be drawn about the date of this speech. ⁵In the Third Olynthiac of 349/8 Demosthenes refers to Philip’s seizure of a place in Thrace in November “two or three years ago” (3.4), which would be consistent with either date. ⁶The suggestion that the reference is to the campaign of 349/8, and has been interpolated into a speech of 352/1, is now rightly rejected. At the same time, the casualness of the reference to Olynthus at 17 rules out the possibility that the speech as a whole belongs as late as 349/8, when that city was at war with Philip. See the Introduction to Dem. 1–3 for relations between Philip and Olynthus in the late 350s. ⁷See Lane Fox 1997: 195–199. 70 demosthenes If the exact circumstances that gave rise to the...