ABSTRACT
Thirty years ago George Cawkwell published a highly influential article on Demosthenes’ later career during which he criticised Demosthenes’ reputation – ‘why should Demosthenes receive so much credit with posterity?’, and ‘if we find that Demosthenes was not so clearly right as his fame has made him, the conclusion need not shock us when we reflect on Demosthenes’ policy in those years about which the de Corona maintains so discreet a silence.’1
Cawkwell was measuring Demosthenes’ political success in the period from Alexander the Great’s accession to power (336) to the Crown trial (330) by his use of opportunities to unite the Greeks. However, his questions apply to Demosthenes’ career as a whole, given the way it ignobly ended with his self-imposed exile. Cawkwell argued that Demosthenes was not able to unite Greece effectively, and especially that he had misjudged the situation in 331 when he did not support the Spartan king Agis III in his attempt to throw off Macedonian rule, an attempt which ended in Spartan defeat. That is why in 330, according to Cawkwell, Aeschines rekindled his earlier charge against Ctesiphon, and why Demosthenes said so little about this period in his speech: because he too realised his error, and thus his vulnerability. In this chapter, I consider not only some of Cawkwell’s arguments for the period he considered but also Demosthenes’ career during Alexander’s reign as a whole. Bound up with this is also the issue of the Athenian mood towards Macedonian domination.
