Calling out a tyrant .......Demosthenes on Athenian appeasement ....... on the wireless

Now the Greek orator Demosthenes was pretty much just a name, but listening to this week's In Our Time radio discussion on the man is to realize I have missed out.

"Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the speeches that became a byword for fierce attacks on political opponents. It was in the 4th century BC, in Athens, that Demosthenes delivered these speeches against the tyrant Philip II of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great, when Philip appeared a growing threat to Athens and its allies and Demosthenes feared his fellow citizens were set on appeasement. 

In what became known as The Philippics, Demosthenes tried to persuade Athenians to act against Macedon before it was too late; eventually he succeeded in stirring them, even if the Macedonians later prevailed. For these speeches prompting resistance, Demosthenes became famous as one of the Athenian democracy’s greatest freedom fighters. 

Later, in Rome, Cicero's attacks on Mark Antony were styled on Demosthenes and these too became known as Philippics.

With Paul Cartledge, A. G. Leventis Senior Research Fellow at Clare College, University of Cambridge, Kathryn Tempest, Reader in Latin Literature and Roman History at the University of Roehampton, and Jon Hesk, Reader in Greek and Classical Studies at the University of St Andrews

Producer: Simon Tillotson"

Picture; Bust of Demosthenes, Roman copy after a Greek Hellenistic original, British Museum, photographed by Marie-Lan Nguyen in 2011 who as  the copyright holder of this work, release this work into the public domain. This applies worldwide.

*Demosthenes' Philippics, In Our Time, Radio 4, Demosthenes' Philippics, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001f4ws