“I wonder,” he remarked instead, “what is going on now in Athens.”
Athens had had the news at sunset, on the day Elateia was occupied. The City Councilors were at their civic meal in the Council Hall, with some old Olympic victors, retired generals and other worthies honored with this privilege. The Agora was clamorous; the courier from Thebes came only on the heels of rumor. All night the streets were like market-time, with kindred running to kindred, merchants to the Piraeus; strangers talking passionately to strangers, women running with half-veiled faces to the women’s rooms of houses where they had friends. At daybreak the City Trumpeter called Assembly; in the Agora the hurdles of the stock pens and the market stalls were set alight to beacon the outer suburbs. The men poured across to Pnyx Hill with its stone rostrum. They were told the news; that Philip was expected to march south at once, and that Thebes would make no resistance. Old men recalled a black day of their childhood, the beginning of shame, starvation, tyranny, when the first stragglers had come in from Goat River on the Hellespont, where the fleet had been annihilated; the Great War lost and the death-throes still to come. The crisp cool air of an autumn morning struck to the bone like a winter frost. The presiding Councilor called aloud, “Does anyone wish to speak?”
A long silence followed. All eyes turned one way. Nobody had the folly to come between the people and their choice. When they saw him mount the bema, no one cheered; the chill was too deep for that; there was only a deep murmur, like the sound of prayer.
All night the lamp had burned in Demosthenes’ study; men walking the streets, too troubled to go to bed, had been comforted by its light. In the dark before the dawn, the draft of his speech was ready. The city of Theseus, Solon, Perikles, at her crux of fate had turned to him. She had found him ready.
Firstly, he said, they could dismiss their fear that Philip was sure of Thebes. If he were, he would not be sitting in Elateia; he would be here now before their walls, he who had always aimed at their destruction. He was making a show of force, to hearten his bought friends in Thebes and daunt the patriots. Now at last they must resolve to forget the ancient feud, and send envoys to offer generous terms of alliance, before Philip’s men had done their evil work there. He himself, if summoned, would not refuse the call. Meantime, let the men of fighting age put on their arms, and march up the Theban road as far as Eleusis, in token of readiness to take the field.
As he ended, the sun rose, and they saw across the dip the Acropolis bathed in splendor; the mellow old marble, the white new shrines, the color and the gold. A great cheer ran over the hill. Those who had been too far to hear all joined in it, sure that salvation had been proclaimed.
Demosthenes went back home, and drafted a diplomatic note to Thebes, heaping scorn on Philip. “…acting as might be looked for in one of his race and nature; insolently using his present fortune, forgetful of his unforeseen rise to power from small mean origins…” Thoughtfully he chewed his pen; the stylos moved on over the wax.
Outside his window, young men still new to war, on the way to report to their tribal officers, were shouting to each other; the jokes of the young, whose meaning he no longer knew. A woman was crying somewhere. Surely, it was in the house. It must be his daughter. If she had anyone to weep over, it was the first he knew of it. Angrily he closed his door; the noise was ill-omened, and disturbed his thoughts.
When the Assembly met at Thebes, no man who could stand on his feet was absent. The Macedonians, being formal allies, had first hearing.
They recalled Philip’s good offices to Thebes; his help in the Phokian war, his support for her hegemony over Boeotia; rehearsed her ancient injuries from the Athenians, their efforts to weaken her, their alliance with the impious Phokians, paying their troops with Apollo’s gold. (With this too, no doubt, they had gilded the Theban shields they had set up, in blasphemous affront to Thebes and to the god.) Philip did not ask that Thebes should take up arms against Athens; Thebans might do so if they chose, and share the fruits of victory; but he would still count them as friends, if they gave him only right of passage.
The Assembly turned it over. They had been angered by Philip’s surprise of Elateia; if he was an ally, he was a highhanded one, it was late to consult them now. For the rest, it was true enough. The great issues of power remained unspoken. Once Athens had fallen, what would they be worth to him? And yet, he had power in Thessaly and had done no harm there. They had fought the long-Phokian war; Thebes was full of dead men’s sons with a family on their shoulders, the widowed mother and the younger ones. Was it not enough?
Antipatros ceased, and sat down. A not unfriendly murmur, almost applause, was heard. The marshal called the Athenian envoys. Demosthenes climbed the rostrum, in a hush of expectation, mostly hostile. Not Macedon, but Athens, had been the threat here for generations. There was no house without a blood-debt from the endless border wars.
He could strike one answering nerve: the common hate for Sparta. He recalled how after the Great War, when Sparta had imposed on Athens the Thirty Tyrants (traitors like those who wanted peace with Philip now), Thebes had given harbor to the Liberators. Beside Philip, the Thirty were mere schoolboy bullies; let the past be forgotten, only that noble act remembered. With skilled timing, he brought out the Athenian offers. Theban rights over Boeotia should be undisputed; if the Boeotians should rebel, Athens would even send troops to push them down. Plataia too, that old bone of contention. He did not remind his hearers that Plataia, in return for Athens’ protection against Thebes, had joined in the stand at Marathon, and been granted Athenian citizenship forever. It was no time for hairsplitting; Plataia should be conceded. Also, if there was war with Philip, Thebes should command all land forces, while Athens would meet two-thirds of the expense.
The burst of applause was missing. Thebans in doubt were looking at other Thebans they knew and trusted, not at him. They were slipping his grip.
Striding forward, lifting his arm, he invoked the heroic dead, Epaminondas and Pelopidas; the glorious fields of Leuktra and Mantinea; the record of the Sacred Band. His ringing voice dropped to a note of silken irony. If these things were no longer of account to them, he had only one request to make on behalf of Athens: right of passage, to oppose the tyrant alone.
He had caught them now. That nip of the old rivalry had done it.
They were shamed, he could hear it in the deep muted sound. Here and there two voices called together for the voting to begin; the men of the Sacred Band were considering their honor. The pebbles rattled into the urns; tally-clerks under close scrutiny flicked their abacuses; a long tedious business, after the efficient slot-boxes at home. The Thebans had voted to tear up the treaty with Macedon, and ally with Athens.
He walked back to his lodging, hardly feeling his feet touch ground. Like Zeus with his scales, he had held and tilted the destiny of Greece. If ordeal lay ahead, what new life came forth without birth-pangs? They would say of him now, forever, that the hour had found the man.
They brought Philip the news next day, as he ate his noon meal with Alexander. The King sent his squires out, before even opening the dispatch; like most men of the time, he had not mastered the knack of reading with the eye alone, he needed to hear himself. Alexander, taut with suspense, wondered why his father could not have trained himself, as he had done, to read in silence; it was only a matter of practice; though his lips still moved with the words, Hephaistion had assured him that no sound at all came out.