THE WORLD'S GREATEST ORATOR. 311

world pronounces these orations admirable, and they
have been studied by every great orator since that
day.

Demosthenes had a great theme for his orations.
He entered public life at a critical period. The
states of Greece had become miserably weak and
divided by their jealousies and intrigues. Philip of
Macedon, the craftiest and ablest leader of his time,
was seeking to make Greece his prey, and using
gold, artifice, and violence alike to enable him to
succeed in this design. Against this man Demos-
thenes raised his voice, thundering his unequalled
denunciations before the assembly of Athens, and
doing his utmost to rouse the people to the defence
of their liberties. Philip had as his advocate an
orator only second to Demosthenes in power, Auschi-
nes by name, whom he had secretly bribed, and who
opposed his great rival by every means in his power.
For years the strife of oratory and diplomacy went.
on. Demosthenes, with remarkable clearness of
vision, saw the meaning of every movement of the
cunning Macedonian, and warned the Athenians in
orations that should have moved any liberty-loving
people to instant and decisive action. But he talked.
to a weak audience. Athens had lost its old energy
and public virtue. It could still listen with lapsed
breath to the earnest appeals of the orator, but had
grown slow and vacillating in action. /lischines had
a strong party at his back, and Athens procrastinated
until it was too late and the liberties of ancient:
Greece fell, never to rise again, on the fatal field of
Cheeronea.