halt chosen--the owl, the ass,
and the Athenians;" but in these days of joy a ship was sent by the State
to bring him home, and fifty talents were granted to him.

But Leosthenes was killed by a stone from the walls of Lamia, and some
Macedonian troops came home from the East to the help of Antipater. They
were defeated by land, but they beat the Athenians by sea; and in a
second battle such a defeat was given to the Greeks that their league
against Macedon was broken up, and each city was obliged to make peace
for itself separately.

[Picture: Gate of Hadrian in Athens]

Antipater made it a condition of granting peace that all who had favoured
resistance to Macedon should be treated as rebels. Demosthenes and his
friends fled from Athens, and took refuge at the temples of different
gods; but the cruel Macedonian was resolved that they should all be put
to death, and took a set of ruffians into his pay, who were called the
Exile-hunters, because they were to search out and kill all who had been
sent away from their cities for urging them to free themselves.
Demosthenes was in the temple of Neptune at Calaurea. When the
exile-hunters came thither, he desired time to write a letter to his
friends, spread a roll of parchment before him, and bit the top of the
reed he was writing with; after which he bowed his head, and covered it
with his robe. There was poison hidden in the top of the reed, and
presently he rose up and said, "Act the part of Creon, and throw my body
to the dogs. I quit thy sanctuary, Neptune, still breathing, though
Antipater and the Macedonians have not spared it from pollution."

He tried to reach the door, but as he passed the altar, fell, and died
with one groan. Poor Athens was quite struck down, and the affairs were
chiefly managed by Phocion, who was a thoroughly honest, upright man, but
submitted to let the Macedonians dictate to the city, because he did not
think the Athenians could make head against them. Antipater could never
persuade him to take any reward for himself, though others who were
friends of Macedon could never be satisfied with bribes. Meantime,
Perdiccas was coming home, bringing with him the two young kings, uncle
and nephew, and meaning to put Antipater down; but he turned aside on his
way to attack Ptolemy, the ablest of all Alexander's generals, who was
commanding in Egypt, and in trying to cross the Nile a great part of his
army was cut off, and