Demosthenes Author:William Jackson Brodribb Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER VI. FIRST SPEECH OF DEMOSTHENES AGAINST PHILIP— SPEECH FOR THE FREEDOM OF THE PEOPLE OF RHODES. The year 352 B.c. brought with it the beginnings of... more » great events. In that year, for the first time, the King of Macedon really showed that ho might possibly be entertaining designs fraught with peril to the Greek world. He had prominently intervened in Greek politics. He had taken a conspicuous part in the Sacred or Holy War between the Thebans and Phocians. Once, indeed, he had been utterly defeated by the Phocian leader, Onomarchus, and hid been driven back into his kingdom with loss and disaster, though report made him say that "he did not fly, but fell back like the battering-ram, to give a more violent shock another time." He speedily again entered Thes- saly with a more powerful army; and with the help of his allies in that country and of the admirable Thes- salian cavalry, he won at Pagasae a decisive victory over Onomarchus, who perished in the flight. Now he was completely master of Thessaly, a country which ought to have been under 1he control of a Greek state, and in which, of late, The'un influence had been supreme. Macedou was thus in effect the principalland power to the north of the Peloponaese; and her king had both displayed military genius, and had shown that he was in command of an army with which it was already a question whether any single Greek state could cope. The battle just fought was on a very considerable scale, and could not have failed to suggest unpleasant apprehensions to the mind of every thinking politician. Philip might very possibly follow up hia success with an instant invasion of northern Greece. He did in fact advance on Thermopylae; but Athens had forestalled him, and the famous pass was guarded by a force bafore which he thought pru...« less