INTRODUCTION

To the Oration on the Regulation of the State

THE contests between the Macedonians and Athenians (to which we owe the most valuable remains of Demosthenes) have been explained in the notes and introductions to the Philippic orations. The reader is not now to be informed at what time, and with what success, King Philip attempted to reduce Perinthus and Byzantium. When he found himself obliged to raise the siege of Byzantium he is said to have turned his arms against Scythia. The Athenians, who were elated by the least appearance of good fortune, considered this as a flight. They were fired with the imagination of an enemy, that had so long proved formidable and successful, defeated in his designs, and this principally by the counsels and arms of Athens, retiring before their general Phocion, and forced from all attempts on Greece to retrieve the honor of his arms in parts remote and barbarous. This they considered as the happy moment for pursuing their advantages, and for reducing that ambition to just and equitable bounds, which was now, for the first time, severely mortified and disappointed.

In order to render the hostilities now meditated more formidable and effectual, the Athenians began seriously to reflect on the causes of past misfortunes, and seemed resolved to reform those corruptions and abuses which had disgraced their constitution and weakened their power.

The oppressions and severe exactions of which their allies and dependent states had lately found particular occasion to complain, and to which the necessity of their affairs had contributed, as well as the avarice of their commanders, naturally determined them to reflect on the necessity of making some effectual provision for the payment of their armies; and this as naturally determined the honest and faithful counsellors to resume the consideration of that old scandalous abuse, the theatrical distributions. Of these the reader has been sufficiently informed in the notes and introductions to the Olynthiac orations.

An assembly was therefore convened to consider the most eligible methods to provide for the public exigencies, in the least burdensome and most effectual manner; and particularly to consider the expediency of restoring their theatrical funds to the service of the army; a point which their misguided decrees had rendered so dangerous to be proposed. On this occasion was the following oration delivered; in which the orator resumes his favorite subject with his usual spirit, yet with sufficient caution: points out the corruptions of his countrymen, with their causes and consequences, and describes both the ancient and present state of Athens- Athens uncorrupted, illustrious, and fortunate, and the same state degenerated and disgraced, with all the honest severity and indignation of a patriot.

In this oration no mention is made of Philip or his designs, of the late transactions in Greece, of the late advantages or disgraces of the Athenian arms. The orator confines himself entirely, and directs the attention of his hearers, to the points immediately under consideration; and we find that these afforded him sufficient room for the exertion of his abilities.