timent, and to endeavour to unite Greece against her old enemy. We can well imagine that such language was likely to meet with a response in many quarters, and that it might well seem patriotic, and even prudent.
In this case, again, Demosthenes thought it his duty to protest. He did so in a speech delivered in 354 B.C. He must have been, in all probability, on the unpopular side. He had, too, against him the opinion of the famous and clever rhetorician, Isocrates, who had urged in one of his pamphlets the expediency of a Panhellenic combination against Persia. The party of Eubulus, backed up by a number of orators and demagogues, supported this policy. To Demosthenes it seemed an idle dream—the preposterous imagination of a knot of political adventurers. The speech in which he opposed it is calm and statesmanlike. "In no one of his speeches," says Mr Grote, "is the spirit of practical wisdom more predominant than in this his earliest known discourse to the public Assembly." He tells his excited countrymen some very plain home-truths. "The Greeks," he frankly says, "are too jealous of each other to be capable of uniting in an aggressive war. They might indeed do so in a war of self-defence. Should Athens declare war, the King of Persia would be able to purchase aid from the Greeks themselves. Such a step would consequently lay bare the worst weaknesses of the Greek world. Their right policy was to put Athens in a posture of defence, that she might not be attacked unprepared. They must reorganise their fleet. They must not shrink from personal military service and lean upon foreign mercenaries.
