useless, unavailable, unprofitable by the agency of these traffickers."
This is indeed a powerful denunciation of a state of things which we know to be very possible, in which the corruption of public men is treated as a joke, and when exposed and detected, is hardly thought to deserve reprobation and punishment. If all that was best in Greece had really so utterly died out, it would seem that Demosthenes was wasting his breath in idle declamation. But we may well believe that he clung to the old Athenian ideal, and could not bring himself to despair of his country. And it is certain that this and the preceding speech produced an effect, and Athens made efforts which were temporarily successful. "The work of saving Greece," he told them before he sat down, "belongs to you; this privilege your ancestors bequeathed to you as the prize of many perilous exertions."
As one might expect, there were those who sought to persuade the Athenians that Philip's power for aggression had been greatly exaggerated, and that he was by no means so formidable as Sparta had once been, when she led the Peloponnesian confederacy. Demosthenes points out that Philip had introduced what was really a new method of warfare. Athens and Sparta, in the height of their power, had only been able to command a citizen militia from the states in league with them. Such a force was prepared only for a summer campaign, and could not always follow up its blows effectively. Philip, on the other hand, could
