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When Antipater was shut up in Lamia by the Greeks, and the Athenians were making thankofferings for the good news, he said to his friend Agesistratus that he did not agree with the rest about these matters, for, he said, I know that the Greeks have both the knowledge and the strength for a stadium dashA stadium was about equal to a furlong and was the usual short-distance run. The dolichos was twenty stadia. in warfare, but cannot hold out for a long-distance run. When Antipater had taken Pharsalus and threatened to besiege the Athenians unless they surrendered the orators, Demosthenes left the city and fled first to Aegina to sit as suppliant in the sanctuary of Aeacus, but was frightened and changed over to Calauria; and when the Athenians voted to surrender the orators including himself, he took his seat as a suppliant there in the temple of Poseidon. And when Archias,This Archias was a tragic actor recorded as victor at the Lenaea circa 330 b.c. in I.G. ii.² 2325 n. Plutarch, Life of Demosthenes, chap. xxviii. names several other prominent Athenians hunted down by him, among them Hypereides. Cf. p. 441 below. Another version of Demosthenes’ retort to Archias is given ibid. 29. nicknamed Exile Hunter, who had been a pupil of the orator Anaximenes, came to fetch him and urged him to leave his sanctuary, indicating that Antipater would receive him as a friend, he said, Your acting in tragedy was not convincing to me, nor will your advice be convincing now; and when Archias tried to use force, the authorities of the city prevented him, and Demosthenes said, I took refuge in Calauria, not to save my life, but to convict the Macedonians of using force even against the sanctuaries of the gods, and asking for writing materials he wrote - so Demetrius of Magnesia says - the distich which was later inscribed by the Athenians upon his statue: Had you possessed but the strength, Demosthenes, like to your spirit; Never would Macedon’s war Greece to submission have brought.See Bergk, Poet. Lyr. Graec. ii. p. 331. The statue, a work of Polyeuctus, is placed near the Roped-off EnclosureThis was a large area in the Market Place which was enclosed at ostracisms, and perhaps at other times, within a barrier of rope for the better control of the popular assembly. Since the contiguous altar of the Twelve Gods has recently (vide Shear in Hesperia, iv. pp. 355 ff.) been uncovered in the northern part of the Agora, this enclosure can no longer, with Judeich (Topographie von Athen ², p. 250), be placed in the south-west area, on the slopes of the Areopagus. and the altar of the Twelve Gods. But according to some authorities he was found to have written Demosthenes to Antipater, greeting. These were the words usually employed at the beginning of letters. PhilochorusMüller, Frag. Hist. Graec. i. p. 407. says that he died by drinking poison, but Satyrus the historian says that the pen with which he began to write the letter was poisoned, and he died by sucking it; and Eratosthenes says that for a long time he wore a poisoned bracelet on his arm through fear of the Macedonians. There are those who say that he died by holding his breath, but others assert that it was by sucking poison from his seal ring. He lived, according to those who give the higher number, seventy years, according to those who giye the lower, sixty-seven. He was active in politics twenty-two years.
