The Public Orations of Demosthenes, vol 1 | Page 3

354 in the loss to her of Chios, Cos, Rhodes, and
Byzantium, and of some of the ablest of her own commanders, and left
her treasury almost empty. About the same time Mytilene and Corcyra
also took the opportunity to break with her. Moreover, her position in
the Thermaic region was threatened first by Olynthus, at the head of the
Chalcidic League, which included over thirty towns; and secondly by
Philip, the newly-established King of Macedonia, who seemed likely to

displace both Olynthus and Athens from their positions of commanding
influence.[1]
Nevertheless, Athens, though unable to face a strong combination, was
probably the most powerful single state in Greece. In her equipment
and capacity for naval warfare she had no rival, and certainly no other
state could vie with her in commercial activity and prosperity. The
power of Sparta in the Peloponnese had declined greatly. The
establishment of Megalopolis as the centre of a confederacy of
Arcadian tribes, and of Messene as an independent city commanding a
region once entirely subject to Sparta, had seriously weakened her
position; while at the same time her ambition to recover her supremacy
kept alive a feeling of unrest throughout the Peloponnese. Of the other
states of South Greece, Argos was hostile to Sparta, Elis to the
Arcadians; Corinth and other less important cities were not definitely
attached to any alliance, but were not powerful enough to carry out any
serious movement alone. In North Greece, Thebes, though she lacked
great leaders, was still a great power, whose authority throughout
Boeotia had been strengthened by the complete or partial annihilation
of Platacae, Thespiae, Orchomenus,[2] and Coroneia. In Athens the ill
feeling against Thebes was strong, owing to the occupation by the
Thebans of Oropus,[2] a frontier town which Athens claimed, and their
treatment of the towns just mentioned, towards which the Athenians
were kindly disposed. The Phocians, who had until recently been
unwilling allies of Thebes, were now hostile and not insignificant
neighbours, and about this time entered into relations with both Sparta
and Athens. The subject of contention was the possession or control of
the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, which the Phocians had recently taken
by force from the Delphians, who were supported by Thebes; and in the
'Sacred War' to which this act (which was considered to be sacrilege)
gave rise in 355 B.C., the Thebans and Locrians fought against the
Phocians in the name of the Amphictyonic Council, a body (composed
of representatives of tribes and states of very unequal importance[3]) to
which the control of the temple traditionally belonged. Thessaly
appears to have been at this time more or less under Theban influence,
but was immediately dominated by the tyrants of Pherae, though the
several cities seem each to have possessed a nominally independent
government. The Greek peoples were disunited in fact and unfitted for

union by temperament. The twofold desire, felt by almost all the more
advanced Greek peoples, for independence on the one hand, and for
'hegemony' or leadership among other peoples, on the other, rendered
any effective combination impossible, and made the relations of states
to one another uncertain and inconstant. While each people paid respect
to the spirit of autonomy, when their own autonomy was in question,
they were ready to violate it without scruple when they saw their way
to securing a predominant position among their neighbours; and
although the ideal of Panhellenic unity had been put before Greece by
Gorgias and Isocrates, its realization did not go further than the
formation of leagues of an unstable character, each subject, as a rule, to
the more or less tyrannical domination of some one member.
Probably the power which was most generally feared in the Greek
world was that of the King of Persia. Several times in recent years (and
particularly in 387 and 367) he had been requested to make and enforce
a general settlement of Hellenic affairs. The settlement of 387 (called
the King's Peace, or the Peace of Antalcidas, after the Spartan officer
who negotiated it) had ordained the independence of the Greek cities,
small and great, with the exception of those in Asia Minor, which were
to form part of the Persian Empire, and of Lemnos, Imbros, and Scyros,
which were to belong to Athens as before. The attempt to give effect to
the arrangement negotiated in 367 failed, and the terms of the Peace of
Antalcidas, though it was still appealed to, when convenient, as a
charter of liberty, also came to be disregarded. But there was always a
sense of the possibility or the danger of provoking the great king to
exert his strength, or at least to use his wealth, to the detriment of some
or all of the Greek states; though at the moment of which we are
speaking