The Golden Hope: A Story of the Time of King Alexander the Great

He was followed by a second herald, representing the Epistate, who, with a loud voice, called upon any citizen above the age of fifty years to speak his mind, others to follow in accordance with their ages. As he ceased and descended, all eyes were turned toward a portion of the Theatre where sat a gray-haired man, with shoulders slightly stooped, a sloping forehead, and a retreating chin, partly hidden by a close-cropped beard.

"Demosthenes! Demosthenes!" came from every part of the horseshoe.

The man to whom Athens turned in this crisis of her affairs sat unmoved and apparently oblivious to the demand of the crowd. Accustomed as they were to the oratorical combats of the Theatre, the citizens understood that Demosthenes had determined to reserve to himself the advantage of speaking last. They turned, therefore, to his chief opponent and called upon Æschines.

With an affectation of carelessness, Æschines ascended the bema and plunged at once into his argument, like a man who speaks what first occurs to his mind. The burden of his contention was that Athens was bound by her oath to observe her treaty with Macedon. To break it, he declared, would be to sink to the depth of dishonor and to make the name of the city a byword throughout the world. As he elaborated point after point in his reasoning, all tending to confirm and enforce his conclusions, it was plain that he was making an impression in spite of the fact that all who heard him knew that he had been in Philip's pay. He painted in dark colors the cost and danger of the war that would follow the violation of the treaty and closed with a florid appeal for constancy and forbearance, which he called the first of virtues.

He was succeeded by the dandy, Demades, whose robes of embroidered linen trailed upon the ground, but who sustained the argument against war with sledge-hammer blows of rhetoric. Glaucippus, Eubulus, Aristophon, and other orators, less famous, sat nodding their heads among their pupils and admirers, who clustered about them criticising or commending each period that fell from the lips of the speakers.

Watching the effect of the speeches, the partisans of Demosthenes, fearful that it might be disastrous to permit his opponents to hold the attention of the people any longer, renewed their shouts for him. The Assembly joined them. It had heard enough of the peace party, and it was eager to know how Demosthenes would answer.

There had been hardly any cessation of the talk and laughter. Many persons even moved about through the audience, chatting with their friends, and the Scythians, whose duty it was to maintain order, did not venture to interfere with them. Everywhere there was talk of the advantages of peace. The fever for war had cooled before the logic of oratory. Ariston, keenly attentive to all that was passing, was among those who left his place and wandered about the amphitheatre, pausing here and there to exchange a few words with an acquaintance. Behind him, like a ripple on the surface of a lake, there spread through the crowd the news that the story of Alexander's death was a falsehood contrived by the friends of Macedon to entrap the republic into war.

Before the old man had returned to his seat, the contradiction had reached Demosthenes, elaborated into every semblance of truth. He saw that it was believed and that he had been robbed of the main theme of his speech; for he could not prove that Alexander was dead. In response to the cries of the multitude, he rose, and there was no pretence in the reluctance with which he walked with head bent toward the benia, considering what he should say. As he ascended, the shouting died away, and for the first time there was absolute stillness in the Theatre.

"Athenians!" he began, in a voice of moderate pitch, but of a resonant tone that carried it to all parts of the circle, "by all means we should agree with those who so strenuously advise an exact adherence to our oaths and treaties – if they really believe what they say. For nothing is more in accord with the character of democracy than the maintenance of justice and honesty. But let not the men who urge us to be honest, embarrass us and our deliberations by harangues which their own actions contradict."

Ariston glanced about him with alarm, which was intensified as the orator, with consummate skill, built up the argument that, having bound himself by the treaty to maintain the liberties of Greece, Alexander had violated his oath by reinstating the tyrants of Messene and by disregarding other specific clauses. Artfully exaggerating the Macedonian aggressiveness, recalling by flattering allusions the great days of Athens, raising the hope of victory if war should be declared, Demosthenes presented the situation to the Assembly in such a light as to make it seem that Athens not only had a right to take up arms against Macedon, but that it was her plain duty to begin the attack. This impression grew out of his words without apparent effort to convey it. There was nothing in his speech to indicate that he was a special pleader presenting only one side of the case. He seemed the personification of candor and fairness. As his voice and gestures became more animated, and the flood of his marvellous eloquence swept over them, it appeared to his fellow-citizens that the men who had given expression to the desire for peace must be charlatans or worse, who had been bribed by Macedonian gold, as in fact many of them had been, to betray them into the hands of the enemy. In words that none but he knew how to choose, he raised the spectre that had been laid by the death of Philip and made it more threatening than it had ever been before.

Under the magic spell of his voice old thoughts and feelings stirred and woke in the hearts of the Athenians. For an hour they became once more the men of Platæa and Salamis and of the hundred bloody fields upon which they had measured their strength with that of their ancient foes from the Peloponnesus. Their former greatness of soul flamed up like a flash from a dying fire.

While Demosthenes spoke, not a word was uttered in the group around Clearchus. The young man sat with flushed cheeks and shining eyes, tingling with a desire to sacrifice life itself, if need there were, to revenge the wrongs of Athens and crush the insolent Macedonian. Leonidas listened with hands clenched and with every nerve at tension, like a hound of pure race straining at his leash toward the quarry. Aristotle was gravely attentive, and even Chares, though he could not be aroused from his lazy pose, followed the oration with evident enjoyment.

When Demosthenes ended and came down from the bema, the Assembly drew a long breath, and instantly each man fell to discussing with his neighbor what was best to be decided. Suddenly they realized with astonishment that Demosthenes had failed to propose any decree and that they had nothing before them upon which they might vote.

"I thought he was going to tell us how Alexander died!" Demades sneered.

"What has become of his witness of whom we have heard so much?" a leather-dealer asked.

"He is afraid to propose war! He has offered no decree!" another citizen cried.

These questions and a hundred others were discussed on every side with a violence that swept away all semblance of dignity or restraint. The factions quarrelled like children, and more than once came to blows in their eagerness, making it necessary for the Scythians of the public guard to separate them. At last the herald of the Epistate demanded in due form whether the Assembly desired any decree to be proposed. Far less than the required number of six thousand hands were raised in the affirmative, and the gathering was dissolved, eddying out of the enclosure in turbulent disorder.

"Is that all?" asked Chares, rising and stretching himself with a yawn.

"That is all," Clearchus replied sadly.

"With a phalanx of ten thousand brave men I could take your Acropolis," Leonidas remarked, measuring the height above his head.

"Yes, but where could you find them?" Aristotle said.

"Who knows? Perhaps in the camp of Alexander," the Spartan replied.

Ariston had slipped away into the crowd.

CHAPTER V

THE BANQUET

On their way from the Theatre, Clearchus informed his friends of his decision to be married on the morrow.

"Then we must feast to-night!" Chares cried promptly.

"Very well," Clearchus said, "but you will have to make the arrangements for me, as I have other things to do."

"Aristotle will take charge of the food and wine," said the Theban, eagerly, "if he is willing to assume such a responsibility; and I will provide the entertainment and send out the invitations. What do you say?"

"Good," Clearchus replied; "that is, if Aristotle agrees."

"I am willing," said the Stagirite.

"It is settled, then," Chares declared. "Come, Leonidas, I shall need your help. Let us get to work."

It was hardly sunset when the guests who had been bidden by Chares began to assemble at the house of Clearchus. A crimson awning had been drawn over the peristylium and the soft light of scores of lamps shone upward against it. Shrubs and flowering plants partly hid the marble columns. Medean carpets had been spread upon the floor. The tables, each with its soft couch, had been arranged in two parallel lines, joined at one end by those set for the host and the most honored of the guests. At the farther end of the space thus enclosed a fountain flung up a stream that sparkled with variegated colors.

All had been prepared under the direction of Aristotle in such a manner as to gratify the senses without jarring upon the most sensitive taste. The masses of color and the contrasts of light and shade were grouped with subtle skill to create a pleasing impression. Slaves walked noiselessly across the hall, appearing and vanishing in the wall of foliage, bearing dishes of gold and of silver and flagons filled with rare wines. Softly, as from a distance, sounded the music of flutes and citharse.

Clearchus and his guests, crowned with wreaths of myrtle, reclined upon the couches. Their talk ran chiefly upon the events of the day and the contest of oratory in the Assembly.

"You Athenians ought to pass a law banishing all your speakers," Chares drawled. "Then there might be some chance that you would adopt a policy and stick to it. As it is, the infernal skill of these men makes you believe first one thing and then another, until you end by not knowing what to think."

"You mean we have plenty of counsellors but no counsel," Clearchus replied.

"That's it, exactly," Chares said. "And that man, Demosthenes, will bring you to grief yet, some day."

"All your states have had their turn of power," Aristotle said, "and none has been able to keep it. There is another day coming and it will be the day of the Macedonian. He dreams of making you all one."

"Let him keep away from my country with his dreams," Leonidas remarked.

"There spoke the lion!" laughed Clearchus. "Stubborn to the last."

"Did you hear what old Phocion said when he came out of the Theatre?" asked a young man with a shrill voice who sat on the right.

"No; what was it?" Clearchus inquired.

"Demosthenes wanted to know what he thought of his oration," the narrator said. "You know Demosthenes likes to hear himself praised and he would almost give his right hand for a compliment from Phocion, the 'pruner of his periods,' as he calls him. 'It was only indifferent,' the old fellow told him, 'but good enough to cost you your life.' You should have seen how pale Demosthenes grew; but Phocion put his hand on his shoulder and said, 'Never mind; for this once, I think I can save thee.'"

"They say Phocion is an honest man," Chares remarked.

"So he is," Aristotle replied. "And one of few."

The young men who had assembled to honor the occasion listened eagerly to every word that fell from the lips of the man whose keen deductions and daring speculations had begun to open new pathways in every branch of human wisdom. The rivalry between the philosophers in Athens was even more keen than that between the orators, and each had his school of partisans and defenders.

"Honesty is truth," said Porphyry, a young follower of Xenocrates, who had succeeded Plato in the Academy. "But what is truth? Have you Peripatetics discovered it yet?"

"We are seeking, at least," Aristotle replied dryly, feeling that an attempt was being made to entrap him.

"Democritus holds that truth does not exist," Porphyry ventured, unabashed.