t he made himself the greatest orator of
Greece, which is equal to saying the greatest orator of the world.

It was not only in delivery that he was great. His speeches were as
convincing when read as when spoken. Fortunately, the great orators of
those days prepared their speeches very carefully before delivery, and
so it is that some of the best of the speeches of Demosthenes have come
down to us and can be read by ourselves. The voice of the whole world
pronounces these orations admirable, and they have been studied by every
great orator since that day.

Demosthenes had a great theme for his orations. He entered public life
at a critical period. The states of Greece had become miserably weak and
divided by their jealousies and intrigues. Philip of Macedon, the
craftiest and ablest leader of his time, was seeking to make Greece his
prey, and using gold, artifice, and violence alike to enable him to
succeed in this design. Against this man Demosthenes raised his voice,
thundering his unequalled denunciations before the assembly of Athens,
and doing his utmost to rouse the people to the defence of their
liberties. Philip had as his advocate an orator only second to
Demosthenes in power, AEschines by name, whom he had secretly bribed, and
who opposed his great rival by every means in his power. For years the
strife of oratory and diplomacy went on. Demosthenes, with remarkable
clearness of vision, saw the meaning of every movement of the cunning
Macedonian, and warned the Athenians in orations that should have moved
any liberty-loving people to instant and decisive action. But he talked
to a weak audience. Athens had lost its old energy and public virtue. It
could still listen with lapsed breath to the earnest appeals of the
orator, but had grown slow and vacillating in action. AEschines had a
strong party at his back, and Athens procrastinated until it was too
late and the liberties of ancient Greece fell, never to rise again, on
the fatal field of Chaeronea.

"If Philip is the friend of Greece we are doing wrong," Demosthenes had
cried. "If he is the enemy of Greece we are doing right. Which is he? I
hold him to be our enemy, because everything he has hitherto done has
benefited him and hurt us."

The fall of Greece before the sword of its foe taught the Athenians that
their orator was right. They at length learned to esteem Demosthenes at
his full worth, and Ctesiphon, a leading Athenian, proposed that he
should r