Things Worth Remembering: ‘You Must Punish the Foes Within Your Gates’

 In the fourth century BC, the great orator Demosthenes gave a speech about democracy that still holds true today.

This week we turn to Demosthenes, who, like Pericles and Cicero, is one of those speakers who resound through the ages. Consider, for a moment, how rare that is—a statesman who died 300 years before Christ speaking to us across the millennia. 

Most speakers these days seem barely able to speak across a day or week.

Demosthenes became one of the greatest orators in Athens in the fourth century BC by, among other things, studying those who came before him, talking with pebbles in his mouth, and running while reciting verse.

He also grasped the importance of speaking simply and striking an emotional chord—both of which shine through in the speech I want to focus on this week, “On the Chersonese.”

The historical context here is complicated, so I will mention it in brief.

The Athenians had, for some time, been interested in occupying the Thracian Chersonese, now Gallipoli, because it was located along their corn ship route connecting the Aegean Sea and what was then Byzantium (and became Constantinople and later, Istanbul). 

An array of Greek city-states had vied for control of the territory for ages. After the so-called Social War of 357—which pitted Athens against the less powerful city-states of Chios, Rhodes, and a few others—the Athenians were once more in possession of it.

But their rival, King Philip of Macedon, was interested in it too—leading to a sort of historical pileup not entirely dissimilar to the events leading up to World War I, in which one event triggers another and another and another. (Among the many events was the birth, in 356, of Philip’s son, who would become Alexander the Great, and had a complicated relationship with Athenian democracy.)

First, the king of Thrace—a region that encompassed the Chersonese—was assassinated. This was followed by a series of treaties and territorial carve-ups, but the question of ultimate control was left unsettled. 

Meanwhile, the Athenians won over the mercenary leader Charidemus, and in 342 they sent troops to the Chersonese to reclaim their stake in the territory. Philip attempted to play the role of arbitrator, gave up on that, and sent his own troops into battle.

This prompted the Athenian general Diopeithes to invade Thrace, which prompted Philip to demand of the Athenians that they withdraw from Cardia, the largest town in the Chersonese.

I trust all this is clear. But if it isn’t, then that is fine. It wasn’t entirely clear to the Greeks either. 

Philip, after all, had many sympathizers in Athens. Just as we’ve become accustomed to officeholders and other so-called elites in the United States offering Kremlin talking points in defense of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, or defending Hamas’s barbaric murder of Jews, so too were there senators in ancient Athens who took the side of Philip against Diopeithes—those who did not see things as clearly as we might have hoped. 

After all, it is certainly true that the Athenians—like present-day Americans—had their many problems. They had been led astray by war. There had been a coup, and then a restoration of the old polis, or democracy. But Athenians seemed exhausted, and they seemed to have lost sight of their founding ideals, why those ideals were so important, or what might replace them. 

They seemed not to grasp that Philip posed a dire threat to what was, at that point, the greatest experiment in self-government ever—the same experiment that, a century before, had bequeathed to the world Socrates and Plato and, more recently, Aristotle, among countless other writers, poets, tragedians, historians, astronomers, mathematicians, and so forth, the people who had literally led the world out of Plato’s allegorical cave of darkness.

It is important to think about this for just a moment: for tens of thousands of years, human beings had lived under kingdoms and despots, and then, for a variety of historical, political, and cultural reasons, along came Athens—and the birth of Western civilization. The whole story of how we came to be is obviously more complicated than that, but the starkness of that divide—before and after Athens—is truly remarkable. Indisputably so.

Demosthenes, in any event, was not confused about who was right and wrong, or what was at stake, offering an extraordinary reply to Philip that we are lucky enough to have in full. This is a miracle itself, when you think of all that was lost in libraries and places of record between his time and ours.

In his speech, he successfully argued to the Athenians that they should not repudiate Diopeithes for standing up to Philip.

First, Demosthenes draws in his audience by establishing his credentials, arguing that he can be trusted. “I shall speak freely,” he says, “for indeed, I could not speak otherwise.” 

He adds: “In Heaven’s name, when I am pleading for your best interests, allow me to speak freely.”

Perhaps we have become jaded to such appeals. Perhaps the Athenians were too. Nevertheless, there is an urgency and a frankness about Demosthenes’ appeal.

But it is in the following passage that Demosthenes truly hits his stride.

“Now there are some who think they confute a speaker the moment they ask, ‘What then ought we to do?’ ” he says. “To these I will give the fairest and truest answer: not what you are doing now.”

One can hear in his words the same appeal to reason, the same sense of urgency, the same moral vision, that informs those in the West watching what is unfolding in the former Soviet Union, the Middle East, and the Taiwan Strait and wondering: When will the grown-ups stand up? When will we do what must be done?

Demosthenes goes on: “I will not, however, shrink from going carefully into details; only they must be as willing to act as they are eager to question. First, men of Athens, you must fix this firmly in your minds, that Philip is at war with us and has broken the peace.”

Ah, yes, just as Vladimir Putin is at war with the Pax Americana, just as the jihadists intend to overthrow Western civilization from within and without, Philip was already at war with Athens—whether the Athenians liked it or not. They could pretend otherwise. They could appease or look away or hope for the best. Or they could fight.

“But if anyone thinks that all this means great expense and much toil and worry, he is quite correct,” Demosthenes concedes. Then, he comes in for the all-powerful blow: “But if he reckons up what will hereafter be the result to Athens if she refuses to act, he will conclude that it is to our interest to perform our duty willingly.”

And finally: “You must needs bear in mind that this is a life-and-death struggle, and the men who have sold themselves to Philip must be abhorred and cudgeled to death, for it is impossible to quell the foes without, until you have punished those within your gates.”