Demosthenes, Speeches 1-17

5. ON THE PEACE

⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠ introduction Demosthenes’ speech On the Peace was delivered in the aftermath of the making of the Peace of Philocrates between Athens and Philip in summer 346.¹ It is correctly dated 346/5 by Dionysius of Halicarnassus² and was probably delivered in autumn 346. Philip’s capture of Olynthus in 348 (see the Introduction to Dem. 1–3) meant the failure of Athens’ attempt to resist him in the north, and he also now held many Athenians as prisoners of war. Athens tried to organize other states in Greece to unite against him, but without success. The city was isolated, war weary, and keen to secure the return of the prisoners. Meanwhile Philip indicated that he wished to put an end to the state of war with Athens that had existed since 357, and the Athenians agreed to enter negotiations. In the background to these negotiations were the long-running war (the Third Sacred War) between Thebes and Phocis, allies of Philip and Athens respectively, and control of the strategically vital pass of Thermopylae in northern Greece. Already in 352 Philip had marched south towards Thermopylae but had been prevented from gaining control of it by the dispatch of an expeditionary force from Athens. Among the Phocian generals some wished to hand the pass over to Athens and Sparta, but others inclined towards Philip. As a result, the Athenians could not be sure that¹The peace takes its name from the most prominent negotiator on the Athenian side.²First Letter to Ammaeus 10. 5. ON THE PEACE ⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠⣠ 5. on the peace 89 Thermopylae would remain in friendly hands, and they feared that Philip would gain control of it and then march his army south against them. They therefore had little choice but to make peace with him. The negotiation of the Peace of Philocrates involved a series of embassies between Athens and Philip in the first half of 346. The main sources for what happened are two long lawcourt speeches, Dem. 19 and Aes. 2, delivered in 343 in the course of a prosecution brought by Demosthenes against his political rival Aeschines. Both men were part of the delegations in 346 that negotiated the peace and then witnessed Philip’s swearing to accept it; but by 343 the peace had become unpopular at Athens, and each sought to shift responsibility for it onto the other. Demosthenes prosecuted Aeschines on a charge of misconduct as an ambassador, alleging that he had been bribed by Philip, but failed to secure his conviction. They returned to the issue in 330 in the trial “on the Crown,” from which again both very long speeches have survived (Dem. 18 and Aes. 3). In these four speeches the two men go into great detail about what happened in 346, but they often contradict each other on matters of fact.³ Already in the autumn of 346 many Athenians felt that the peace had not turned out as they had hoped and that Philip had tricked them. Two aspects of the peace were regarded as particularly hard to accept. The first was Philip’s insistence that only those allies of Athens who were members of the Second Athenian Confederacy should be included in the peace, whereas the Athenians had wanted to extend its protection to both the Thracian king Cersobleptes and the Thessalian city of Halus. Philip would not agree to this, and in the summer of 346 he continued operations in Thrace and also captured Halus. The second Athenian grievance arose from the way in which Philip had brought the Sacred War between Thebes and Phocis to an end. Aeschines and Philocrates were apparently led to believe by Philip, and an-³There is disagreement about many aspects of the negotiation of the Peace of Philocrates. See Hammond and Griffith 1979: 329–347; Sealey 1993: 143–159; MacDowell 2009: 314–342. See also on these four speeches Carey 2000 and Yunis 2005 in this series. 90 demosthenes nounced to the Athenians, that Philip would (contrary to his previous policy) turn against his ally Thebes and save Phocis, whereas in fact he continued to support Thebes and destroyed the cities of the Phocians (9–10). Aeschines was accused by Demosthenes of taking bribes from Philip to persuade the Athenians of this (see above; cf. 12), but it is not necessary to believe that he was guilty of anything worse than self-deception. These tricks of Philip are...