THE CASE AGAINST

The most striking feature of the speech is the large amount of material that appears in other speeches. Demosthenes did sometimes reuse sections of one speech in another (for example, cf. 23.207–9 and 3.25–6, 22.47–78 and 24.160–86), but rarely to this extent, and never from as many as five other speeches (Dem. 2, 3, 15, 19, 23).Footnote ⁵ Only one of these other speeches (Dem. 23) is dated earlier than the likeliest date for speech 13, if we were to assume that the latter was in fact a genuine speech (351/0–350/49 b.c.).Footnote ⁶ The sharing of so much material can be explained in two ways. Either Demosthenes reused the content of speech 13 in an exceptional number of later speeches to the point where we must see the speech as the seminal work in the development of many of his arguments, or its content was gathered from the other speeches by a later writer in a rather excessive effort to appear Demosthenic.Footnote ⁷ The latter is the simpler explanation. The writer has, however, tried to avoid the impression that he has just copied out all the passages verbatim by altering and rearranging them, and by splicing together material from multiple speeches at 13.26–30. Sometimes the debt to other speeches is less overt, as when arguments are adopted but expressed in different terms. The writer clearly exercised discrimination and care in terms of both material and style.

The display of so much literary skill in On Organization is at odds with the weakness of its argument. The pretext for the speech is curiously vague: περὶ μὲν τοῦ παρόντος ἀργυρίου καὶ ὧν ἕνεκα τὴν ἐκκλησίαν ποιεῖσθε ‘in dealing with the present sum of money and the other matters referred to this assembly’ (1).Footnote ⁸ Only with time does the matter under debate become clear: whether this money should go to the theoric fund (ἑορτή 13.2, τοῖν δυοῖν δ’ὀβολοῖν 13.10). The speaker then proceeds to advocate a comprehensive scheme of pay for service, before shifting at 12 to a general critique of the contemporary behaviour of the dēmos and its leaders. This runs for the rest of the speech. Even if such generalized admonishment was not uncommon, it is perhaps hard to imagine the assembly patiently enduring this dressing-down from someone who begs indulgence for his speech because he is not among the most prominent ῥήτορες (18).Footnote ⁹ It is in this second, longer, critical part of the speech that all the mirrored passages appear, giving the impression that the rest of the speech is a setting designed for their display. Insufficient attention has been paid to the trimming of 3.27, for the statement that Athenians ἐρημίας ἐπειλημμένοι ‘have a clear field’ at 13.27 lacks the clarification provided in the original: τῶν δ᾽ ἄλλων οὐδενὸς ὄντος ἀξιόχρεω περὶ τῶν πρωτείων ἡμῖν ἀντιτάξασθαι ‘none of the other cities is able to compete with us for supremacy’. Without this explanation, the phrase ἐρημίας ἐπειλημμένοι is rendered obscure.Footnote ¹⁰ The writer seems to have been more attached to style and rhetorical ornamentation through choice passages than to argumentative clarity.

This assessment is strengthened by problems with the factual premises of the speech. The most plausible interpretation of 13.1—that the assembly is debating the appropriate use of surplus money (which is presumed to be going to the theoric fund; cf. 2, 10)Footnote ¹¹ —is at odds with the likelihood that the direction of all surplus money into the theoric fund was the consequence of a νόμος, and consequently that changing the arrangement was not within the power of the assembly but of the νομοθέται.Footnote ¹² The writer seems reluctant to provide specifics where we would expect them: not only are the details of the meeting kept vague, but he also declines to explain how his scheme of organization will be achieved, saying that this has been done at a previous meeting (9–10). The scheme is, however, presented as new at 13.3, which leads the reader to suspect that further discussion was avoided because the writer, living after the 350s, had no idea how such a scheme could have been implemented in practice.

The indications of date are also contradictory. On the one hand, a reference to decrees passed against ‘the accursed Megarians' for using the sacred ὀργάς located on the border with Attica (13.32–3) is consistent with a date of composition in the late 350s. The date may be narrowed down to the time between late 352/early 351, and sometime in the archon year 350/49 b.c.: one of the decrees mentioned may have survived (IG II² 204 = RO 58). The decree dates to Poseideon 352/1 b.c. and mentions an earlier decree (lines 54–5). Our writer complains that the decrees have not yet been acted upon, while fragments of Philochorus and Androtion state that action on the question of the ὀργάς was taken sometime in 350/49 b.c. (cf. Dem. 3.20).Footnote ¹³ While we may suspect that a later writer is unlikely to have added obscure period references like that to Megara, we cannot rule out the possibility that he had good sources to hand or some otherwise lost Demosthenic material.

The presence of other chronological markers, meanwhile, does not suit a genuine composition of the late 350s. The speech refers to allied contributions, garrisons in allied territory and to the extortion of wealth from the allies by Athenian generals and their mercenaries (13.4–6). These details seem more appropriate to the Social War (357–5 b.c.) and the few years leading up to it, when Athens' naval confederacy became increasingly oppressive.Footnote ¹⁴ Nor would we expect the total absence of Philip II in a speech of the late 350s. Philip's absence is significant, and we shall return to it shortly. The vigorous criticism of Eubulus' financial administration (13.28, 13.30), predating the only example of comparable rhetoric in the Third Olynthiac in 349/8 b.c. (3.29–30), is at odds with Demosthenes' general trajectory of increasing policy disagreement with Eubulus. Demosthenes began by advocating intervention abroad (Dem. 15) and then criticized Eubulus' foreign policy outright (23.201, 4.1), just as he then made guarded criticisms of the theoric fund in the First Olynthiac (1.19–20) before delivering the full-throated denunciation of the Third Olynthiac. The force of the attack made in the Third Olynthiac on Athens' leaders using a comparison between public and private buildings (3.29–30; cf. 19.208–9) is strangely blunted in speech 13 by the insertion of a qualification (underlined) ([Dem.] 13.30–1):

The disclaimer seems to reflect a later opinion, at odds with Demosthenes' rhetoric in the early 340s, that the building projects of Eubulus' time were actually of great importance (cf. Din. 1.96). Historical hindsight also seems to inform speech 13 at the point where ‘Demosthenes' speaks of himself in the third person from the point of view of his critics ([Dem.] 13.12):

Demosthenes never characterizes his rhetoric so precisely and the description seems more suited to Demosthenes the later statesman (cf. 8.73) than Demosthenes the up-and-coming speaker. Moreover, it conflicts with his plea, noted above, that the audience not object to the mismatch between his status and the ambition of the speech (18).

Even more worrying than the confused evidence of date is the cluster of overlooked errors in the description of the comprehensive pay-scheme (ἡ σύνταξις ἁπάντων) (13.3–5, 13.9). They suggest that the writer has condensed, and misunderstood, a passage in the Third Olynthiac (3.34–6). The following is the scheme as it appears in On Organization ([Dem.] 13.4):

There are three major differences between what appears in speech 13 and what appears in the Third Olynthiac. First, our writer states that all the revenue of the polis will be used (τὰ μὲν προσιόντα τῇ πόλει πάντα), which is obviously impossible. Second, he wrongly assumes that Athens had unilateral spending control over allied contributions as part of this revenue (καὶ ὅσ᾽ ἐκ τῶν συμμάχων ὑπάρχει). Third, he expresses the view that money should be distributed equally (λαμβάνειν ὑμᾶς φημὶ χρῆναι τὸ ἴσον ἕκαστον, cf. 19) instead of ‘equitably’ (cf. 2.31, 3.34). In this way, ‘abundance (εὐπορία) may be provided for all’ (9). It is at the very least unlikely that Demosthenes (or any ῥήτωρ) could have written, much less delivered, anything like this proposal. It is even more ambitious than that of Xenophon in Ways and Means and so completely unlike the cautious financial counsel Demosthenes gives in other speeches of the late 350s, Against Leptines (Dem. 20) and On the Symmories (Dem. 14).

Defenders of speech 13 have never fully explained why it contains so much material found elsewhere, and prefer to downplay the inadequacies in its argument. The other problems I have raised, in particular the distorted description of the pay scheme, make it even more difficult to believe that Demosthenes could have written several passages in speech 13 that he thought were good enough to reuse later on, while spending so little time on the fundamentals of argument and fact. The historical slips and the self-characterization at 13.12, moreover, best suit a writer who lacked first-hand experience of Athens in the mid fourth century, but who was still familiar with Demosthenes' speeches from the 340s.Footnote ¹⁶ The speech has so many serious problems that it is almost impossible to believe Demosthenes was responsible for it.

EXPLAINING SPEECH 13

Having established what On Organization is not, can we say what it is? We can start by observing that our writer's favourite rhetoric was the rhetoric of political economy, the possibilities of organization (ἡ σύνταξις), and popular power, all of which are major themes in undoubtedly genuine speeches of Demosthenes. It is hardly surprising that the writer drew on the Third Olynthiac most of all. It is there that Demosthenes gives the clearest exhibition of his righteous indignation against the Athenians and their ῥήτορες when it comes to the conduct of politics and finance. It seems that our writer's imagination was fired by the pay scheme that appears at the very end of that speech, and he decided to produce a speech in which that scheme is introduced for the first time. Unfortunately, his inability or lack of interest in describing exactly how the scheme will be achieved meant that he had to posit an even earlier speech, where the real nitty-gritty was dealt with.Footnote ¹⁷

The passages shared between the Third Olynthiac and Against Aristocrates, in turn, probably led our writer to use the latter speech as his second main influence. So much of the borrowed material comes from these two speeches that the writer probably had texts of these speeches to hand. By contrast, the tiny snippets we get from other speeches, and the fixation on ‘organization’, which is strongly reminiscent of speech 14, On the Symmories, are more likely to have come from the writer's memory before being double-checked in the manuscripts.

Next, as noted already, the speech may not be utterly devoid of material written by Demosthenes. There is a contrast between our writer's lack of attention to the feasibility of the comprehensive pay-scheme he proposes and his obscure references to the dispute over the sacred ὀργάς, the exile of the Phliasians and the burglary of the Opisthodomos.Footnote ¹⁸ The explanation may be that these references come not just from an Atthidographer or some other historical work but from otherwise-lost Demosthenic material from the 350s. Access to non-extant writings, along with the heavy use of material from extant speeches, would help to explain the accomplished stylistic mimicry of speech 13. A strict contrast between ‘authenticity’ and ‘spuriousness’, which features in many discussions of speech 13, would in a sense be a false choice.

Why was speech 13 written? It is beyond doubt that we are not dealing with a mere rhetorical exercise. The style and the content of the speech, especially the obscure chronological signpost of the ὀργάς dispute, are not what we (or, for that matter, what successive ancient scholars) associate with that sort of work. Nor is it what we would expect of an exercise by Demosthenes himself that was posthumously circulated by an editor. It is also hard to imagine that an exercise would have been disseminated widely enough to survive, let alone become part of the standard corpus of Demosthenes. The speech is the work of a rhetorical expert. His motives may have been pious. Finding some fragmentary writings of Demosthenes, he decided to ‘restore’ the speech from which they came. This scenario has the advantage of explaining what would otherwise be an unusual choice of chronological setting and subject matter. On the other hand, a subversive interpretation might be preferred: in light of the way in which the unflattering rhetorical characterization of Demosthenes at 13.12 is borne out by the rest of the speech, could speech 13 instead be a learned and hostile parody of his rhetoric?

The first scenario does not seem quite right, and the second is simply wrong, when we consider that feature of speech 13 which writers in antiquity stressed: the absence of Philip.Footnote ¹⁹ His absence cannot be explained by the ‘dramatic’ date of 352/1–350/49 b.c.: Athenian troops had been sent to block Philip at Thermopylae in the summer of 352 b.c.,Footnote ²⁰ and in 352/1 b.c. Demosthenes probably delivered the First Philippic after Philip had interfered in Euboea and made a raid on Marathon (4.34).Footnote ²¹ In Against Aristocrates (352/1 b.c.) he is ἀλλ᾽ ὁ μάλιστα δοκῶν νῦν ἡμῖν ἐχθρὸς εἶναι ‘now accounted our very worst enemy’ (23.121). The alternate possibility, raised by the scholiast (13.1), is that Philip is absent because the speech dates from 353/2 b.c. and so is closer in date to On the Symmories (354/3 b.c.) than the First Philippic.Footnote ²² However, a date of 354/3 or 353/2 b.c. looks too early in light of our evidence associating the dispute over the Megarian ὀργάς with the years 352/1–350/1 b.c.Footnote ²³ Moreover, even if Philip was not yet generally considered a strategic threat in 354/3–353/2 b.c., we might have expected the writer to at least make mention of him because he had been Athens' enemy since 357 b.c. The speech actually suggests that Athens faces no great strategic threat ([Dem.] 13.11):

I submit that the absence of Philip is a case of deliberate avoidance. Even the most indirect reference to him has been left out of the speech at 26, which is otherwise copied verbatim from the Third Olynthiac (3.24) ([Dem.] 13.26; cf. [Dem.] 7.12):

It appears that our writer has eschewed Philip in favour of Demosthenes' earlier rhetoric, despite including material that dates the speech to the time of Philip's emergence on Demosthenes' radar (352/1–350/1 b.c.) and despite using material from a speech like the Third Olynthiac, which is focussed on the threat of Philip. This choice makes it unlikely that speech 13 is a ‘restoration' or a parody. In both cases we would expect some mention of Philip but especially in the latter, because Demosthenes' celebrated anti-Philip rhetoric would be the obvious target of any caricature.

Philip's absence is key to explaining On Organization. First, by leaving him out, our writer creates a uaticinium ex euentu. Demosthenes is made to appear prescient, like a latter-day Themistocles (Thuc. 1.138.3) or Pericles (Thuc. 2.65.6–7, 13), of the kind of threat that Athens would face and the kind of action that was required, before that threat had materialized in the shape of Macedon. Both the question posed by the imagined critic in speech 13, ‘What good have we ever got from the speeches of Demosthenes?’ (12), and the speaker's subsequent warning, ‘beware lest you end by realizing that what you now consider to be sound practice was a terrible mistake’ (2), appear, like other hints of hindsight discussed earlier,Footnote ²⁴ a little too knowing. Second, the speech overcomes the basic problem that revisiting Demosthenes' rhetoric often means recollecting failure: the avoidance of Philip is also an avoidance of the memory of Athens' defeat.

It seems that underneath a scholarly commitment to stylistic fidelity there lurks a political desire to present Demosthenes favourably, and perhaps the wish to reflect a changed set of relations with the Macedonians. The obvious context for a speech that seeks to define Demosthenes' career positively is 280/79 b.c. This was the year the Athenians passed a decree rehabilitating Demosthenes and bestowing on him the city's highest honours.Footnote ²⁵ The move became possible once Athens won back its freedom and democracy from Demetrius Poliorcetes in 287/6 b.c. The commemoration was orchestrated by Demosthenes' nephew and political heir Demochares of Leuconoë. Through the honours posthumously awarded to Demosthenes and the inscription of the decree that bestowed them, Demochares not only elevated his status (as Demosthenes' closest living relative, he inherited the honours), but won public affirmation of his claim to control and define Demosthenes' posthumous reputation. By assimilating himself to a Demosthenes who was partially of his own making, Demochares channelled the moral authority of a patriot and martyr in the pursuit of his own political goals. To this end, he also wrote a highly polemic 21-book account of recent Athenian history (FGrHist 75 F1–2).Footnote ²⁶

Demochares' claim to Demosthenes' legacy no doubt extended to his papers, and Demochares has long been the favourite candidate for the initial formation of the Demosthenic corpus. Based on stichometric notations in the manuscripts, J.A. Goldstein shows that speech 13 belonged to an early collection of public speeches (including the spurious speeches 7 and 11) assembled in all likelihood before the mid third century b.c.Footnote ²⁷ Unlike Demosthenes' old partisans, kinsmen such as Demochares would have the greatest personal and political interest in using such a collection of Demosthenes' public addresses to defend him from posthumous attack and to champion his reputation as ‘hero, patriot and moral example’.Footnote ²⁸ Speech 13 was not the work of a crude propagandist but of a scholar steeped in Demosthenes' work. I wonder if Demochares' concerns influenced not just the publication of On Organization but its creation as well.

Even within a collection of speeches assembled to present Demosthenes in the best possible light, On Organization stands out as an encapsulation of some of Demosthenes' most memorable rhetoric. As such, it could be celebrated and drawn upon. There were obvious parallels between the state of Athens in the 350s and in the 280s. After 286 b.c. Athens was threatened by critical shortages of food and money, not helped by the Antigonid garrisons that still held the Piraeus and other forts in Attica. Alleviating shortages and retaking the Piraeus were accordingly the chief political priorities of Demochares in the 280s.Footnote ²⁹ His own posthumous honorary decree declares that, as soon as Demochares returned from exile, he συστείλαντι τὴν διοίκησιν πρώτῳ καὶ φεισαμένῳ τῶν ὑπαρχόντων ‘first reduced the expenses of the administration and was sparing of public resources' ([Plut.] Mor. 852e). Demochares sent embassies to secure much-needed food and funds. It is perhaps no accident that the honorary decree he proposed for Demosthenes lauds his personal financial contributions to the polis at greater length than his other achievements. Demochares knew, as most of his fellow citizens must have also known, that it was only a matter of time before a confrontation with Antigonus Gonatas would be necessary, and that attacking the Piraeus was the quickest way to bring this on. Moreover, the absence of Philip from the speech had the added convenience of recognizing that two of Philip's successors, Lysimachus and Ptolemy, had provided invaluable assistance to Athens in the 280s in response to Demochares' embassies.Footnote ³⁰ The single Macedonian autocrat who had consumed Demosthenes' energy had now been replaced by the rival διάδοχοι. Where once Macedon had only represented danger, some Macedonian kings were now proving crucial to Athens' continued independence and survival.

The message of speech 13—to spend limited money wisely and to sacrifice comfort for the good of the polis, while avoiding blanket statements of hostility towards Macedonian kings—cannot have been very different to Demochares' own rhetoric in the assembly. If copies of On Organization began to circulate in the 280s, it would have reinforced Demochares' message by evoking a pivotal moment in Athenian history. Not only were the threats Athens faced after 286 b.c. comparable to those faced in the late 350s, but failure to take action would again lead to disaster. Demochares' close association with his uncle would, meanwhile, inoculate him from the bitter attacks the speech makes on Athens' political leadership, leaving only the Athenian dēmos itself in need of correction. We may hypothesize that speech 13 was written at the behest of Demochares by a rhetorician steeped in Demosthenes' speeches, and who may have utilized a few unpublished scraps from his papers.

Two concurrent routes for the ‘release’ of speech 13 may be imagined. The text of the speech, along with the rest of Demochares' hypothesized collection, could have been disseminated by booksellers eager to offer texts by a famous author (Dion. Hal. Isocr. 18).Footnote ³¹ Oral delivery was, however, the most effective means of general dissemination. Did Demochares quote from it in his own speeches, in preference to the Philippics, just as earlier orators were known to quote from recreated historical documents (Dem. 19.303; Lycurg. Leoc. 81)?Footnote ³² For readers with rhetorical interests, as well as for Demochares with his political agenda, the great attraction of speech 13 would be the way in which it conveniently condensed Demosthenes' finest rhetoric on the topical subject of optimal financial and military organization into one relatively short but polished text. In On Organization, Demochares would have had a document that expanded upon the justification supplied in the honorary decree. Both speech and decree would affect the apotheosis of Demosthenes and trumpet Demochares' personal connection to the great man.

The case for the ‘authenticity’ of Demosthenes 13 is far less straightforward than it has been made to seem of late. Its stylistic strength is not enough to mask the serious and, to my mind, insurmountable obstacles that stand in the way of acceptance. The burden of proof should still rest with those who wish to treat it as a ‘genuine’ work. With its combination of fine style, historical mistakes and awkward silence, On Organization is a strange beast. It is clear that any satisfactory explanation must abandon rigid oppositions between authentic and inauthentic, scholarship and propaganda. With this in mind, I have suggested an explanation that fits the conflicting indications of identity and the available historical evidence. The speech is not good evidence for Demosthenes and Athens in the 350s, but it does shed light on the reception of both by later generations of Athenians.