ABSTRACT

Demosthenes 9 (the third Philippic) was delivered in the Athenian Assembly in early 349 BCE, towards the end of a decade during which Philip of Macedon had come to be seen as an increasingly imminent threat to Athens. In a historical account of recent events in Olynthus, Eretria, and Oreus (9.53-69), Demosthenes adopts a rhetorical technique conflating the identities of the peoples of these three cities with that of the Athenians. Concentrating on interactions between corrupt leaders and a gullible populace, he reinforces this focus by adopting specific Athenian terminology to describe the internal affairs of other Greek cities. By describing the fall of Olynthus and the stasis on Euboea in Athenian terms, and identifying the peoples of those states with the Athenians, he underscores his argument that the same thing could happen in Athens. It was, arguably, thanks to this subtle rhetorical strategy that - uniquely among Demosthenes’ surviving deliberative speeches - the third Philippic succeeded in persuading the Athenians to adopt his proposals.