The War Comes Home

Greece, Macedonia, and Western Asia

SPRING 319–SPRING 318 B.C.

Life for citizens of Athens went on much as it had before the Hellenic War—that is, for those who werecitizens of Athens. The city’s poor had lost their citizenship rights, and many of these, perhaps thousands, had relocated to Thrace on the wintry northern frontier of the Greek world. Old man Antipater had provided them with land there, after forcing Athens to change its constitution and disenfranchise them. “They were like refugees forced out from a city that had fallen in a siege,” says Plutarch, even though Athens had in fact avoided a siege by agreeing to Antipater’s terms, with its two chosen representatives, Phocion and Demades, leading the negotiating team.

Only those with estates worth at least two thousand drachmas, a sizable fortune, could now take part in government. This amounted to about nine thousand people, less than half the citizen body under the old democracy. The rest—those who chose to stay rather than emigrate—suffered what the Athenians called atimia, or “loss of honor,” meaning loss of the right to bring legal cases, to hold office or serve on jury panels, or to vote in the Assembly, the body that debated and decided all matters of state. Atimiawas political excommunication, formerly imposed only on criminals or bankrupts, and the Athenian poor hated it.

Only twice before in nearly two centuries had Athens’ democratic constitution been replaced by an oligarchy. Both times, the change was made under pressure of war with Sparta, and both times it was reversed as soon as that pressure abated. In the second instance, in 403 B.C., a garrison of Spartan soldiers had kept the oligarchic regime in power; democracy was restored as soon as the garrison was withdrawn. The poor and landless of Athens had shown they could not be denied a voice for long. Their boisterous energy made the city prosperous, and their strong arms, manning the oars of its warships, made it powerful.

In the wake of the Hellenic War it was again a foreign garrison, this time a Macedonian one, that was keeping the poor of Athens down. Though Menyllus, the garrison commander, had been temperate in his use of force, the daily sight of armed Macedonians in the harbor town of Piraeus reminded the Athenians where they stood. The masses could mount no counterrevolution, find no escape from the disgrace of atimia, so long as the fort on the hill of Munychia was held by the world’s best infantrymen. Perhaps all of Athens, acting as one, might overcome that fort, but the city was divided. Many of the privileged nine thousand were content with their new oligarchy, and some, especially Demades, one of the politicians leading the regime, were profiting handsomely from it.

1. DEMADES AND PHOCION (ATHENS)

Demades knew what atimiawas like, for he had once suffered it himself. Convicted five years earlier, along with Demosthenes, of pilfering Harpalus’ embezzled funds, he had stayed in Athens but without citizen rights, a political nonentity. But all that had changed. After Athens’ defeat in the Hellenic War, his accusers had erased his penalty and begged him to come back into politics. His friendship with the Macedonians had in the end paid off. As one of two Athenians whom Antipater trusted, Demades had come to enjoy vast power under the new constitution. Now and then he might be required to do odious things—like sponsoring the measure that brought death to his former colleagues Demosthenes and Hyperides—but he was well rewarded for such accommodations.

Demades had grown up poor, son of a poor father, but his political career had made poverty a distant memory. A notorious libertine for whom no meal and no bribe were too large, Demades could at last subsidize all his pleasures. Athenian law barred foreign dancers from performing in the state theater, under penalty of a huge fine, but Demades produced a play there featuring a dance troupe made up entirely of foreigners, coolly paying the fine for each one. It was his way of showing the city he could afford to squander his wealth. He had come a long way from where he had started, rowing in the Athenian navy for a bare living wage.

Demades had a son, Demeas, the result of a dalliance with one of the loose flute girls who performed at Athenian soirees. He enjoyed lavishing money on the boy and training him in the family profession, political toadying. Recently the lad had begun speaking in the Assembly, providing a target for those who disliked Demades but dared not attack him directly. One such opponent had interrupted a speech by Demeas with a gibe at the boy’s origins: “Why don’t you shut up? You’re more full of wind than your mother was!” Such remarks showed that old resentments against Antipater, and those who served his interests, were still alive. But with Macedonian soldiers just down the road in Piraeus, those resentments stayed bottled up.

For the past two years Demades had watched events in Asia, the spreading civil war between Macedonian generals, with keen interest. Though he had done well working for Antipater, it was somehow not enough. Perhaps he could rise higher, or grow richer, under a new master or else be rid of the senior colleague, Phocion, who always overshadowed him. Knowing that Antipater and Phocion would soon be off the scene—both were very old men—Demades began writing to Perdiccas, head of the Babylon government, urging him to invade Europe and destroy the “old and rotting rope” holding the Greek cities together. Perdiccas’ assassination had ended that little venture, but Demades was not perturbed. He went on about his business, lording it over the Athenians, spending vast sums on a wedding banquet for his son. “Boy, when I married your mother,” he told Demeas, “even the next-door neighbors didn’t notice; but kings and rulers will chip in to help you celebrate yourwedding.”

Phocion, Demades’ partner in leadership, was cut from a different cloth and used his power to different ends. Sober and austere, high-minded and philosophic, this octogenarian saw Athens’ loss of freedom as a crisis to be managed, not an opportunity to be seized. He tried to soften the heavy tread of the Macedonians—for example, by opposing the Piraeus garrison, though he finally acceded to this as a necessary evil. He often intervened with old man Antipater to stop him from deporting dissidents beyond the Ceraunian Mountains, into what is today northern Albania. Recently he had arranged such clemency for Hagnonides, an unreconstructed democrat. Thanks to Phocion’s intercession, Hagnonides had ended up banished only to the Peloponnese, not to that terrible wilderness.

The new restrictions on citizenship did not offend Phocion, for he had no love of democracy. His childhood teacher, Plato, had taught him to see the follies of that bizarre system, and he had often witnessed them himself in his sixty years of public life. The Athenians had elected him general for forty-fiveone-year terms yet hardly ever took his advice. Instead, they ruined themselves in reckless battles against Macedon, losing every time. The silencing of the poor, who had most of all agitated for the Hellenic War, suited Phocion perfectly well; in his eyes the poor had listened to fools like Hyperides and hence had brought their troubles on themselves. His own class, the staid and sturdy aristocracy, preferred to soothe the Macedonian lion rather than provoke its fury. Theirs had always been the sensible, moderate path.

Like Demades, Phocion had countless opportunities to profit under Macedonian power, but unlike his gluttonous junior colleague he refrained. Antipater liked to say he had two close friends in Athens, one to whom he could never give enough and one to whom he could never give anything.Despite his wealthy background, Phocion disdained luxury—or at least feigned disdain, for it was good politics in Athens to appear impervious to bribes. Once Phocion had even refused cash sent by Alexander the Great himself. When the king’s messengers approached bearing chests of silver, Phocion asked why Alexander so favored him. “It’s because Alexander judges that you alone are a good and true man,” he was told. “Then tell him to let me be as I am, and be regarded so,” he replied, turning the money aside. (That last phrase, “be regarded so,” showed that Phocion was less a philosopher than a career politician tending his image.)