160
But when Philip was dead and Alexander had come to the throne, Demosthenes again put on prodigious airs and caused a shrine to he dedicated to PausaniasPausanias was the man who assassinated Philip. and involved the senate in the charge of having offered sacrifice of thanksgiving as for good news. And he nicknamed Alexander Margites;Margites was the name of a caricature of Achilles in a poem that passed under the name of Homer. Demosthenes asserted, then that Alexander, in his aspiration to be a second Achilles, would never get farther that to become a caricature of him. (Richardson.) and had the effrontery to say that Alexander would never stir out of Macedonia, for he was content, he said, to saunter aroundPerhaps a sneer at Alexander’s studies under Aristotle, the Peripatetic. in Pella, and keep watch over the omens; and he said this statement was not based on conjecture, but on accurate knowledge, for valor was to be purchased at the price of blood. For Demosthenes, having no blood himself, formed his judgment of Alexander, not from Alexander’s nature, but from his own cowardice.
161
But when now the Thessalians had voted to march against our city, and the young Alexander was at first bitterly angry—naturallyPhilip’s death was immediately followed by revolutionary movements centering in Thebes and Athens. The reference here is to Alexander’s sudden descent upon Thebes, with the Thessalians as his supporters.—and when the army was near Thebes, Demosthenes, who had been elected ambassador by you, turned back when halfway across Cithaeron and came running home—useless in peace and war alike! And worst of all: while you did not surrender himAfter the destruction of Thebes and the suppression of the revolt elsewhere, Alexander demanded the surrender of Demosthenes and other anti-Macedonian Athenian statesmen. nor allow him to be brought to trial in the synod of the Greeks, he has betrayed you now, if current report is true.
