That Athens had undergone sad defeat and humiliation, having been driven from her independent and even presidential position into the degraded character of a subject Macedonian city, since the time when Demosthenes first began political life—was a fact but too indisputable. Æschines even makes this a part of his case; arraigning the traitorous mismanagement of Demosthenes as the cause of so melancholy a revolution, and denouncing him as candidate for public compliment or no better plea than a series of public calamities.[687] Having thus animadverted on the conduct of Demosthenes prior to the battle of Chæroneia, Æschines proceeds to the more recent past, and contends that Demosthenes cannot be sincere in his pretended enmity to Alexander, because he has let slip three successive occasions, all highly favorable, for instigating Athens to hostility against the Macedonians. Of these three occasions, the first was, when Alexander first crossed into Asia; the second, immediately before the battle of Issus; the third, during the flush of success obtained by Agis in Peloponnesus.[688] On neither of these occasions did Demosthenes call for any public action against Macedonia; a proof (according to Æschines) that his anti-Macedonian professions were insincere. [687] Æschines adv. Ktesiph. pp. 526, 538, 541. [688] Æschines adv. Ktesiph. p. 551-553. I have more than once remarked, that considering the bitter enmity between the two orators, it is rarely safe to trust the unsupported allegation of either against the other. But in regard to the last-mentioned charges advanced by Æschines, there is enough of known fact, and we have independent evidence, such as is not often before us, to appreciate him as an accuser of Demosthenes. The victorious career of Alexander, set forth in the preceding chapters, proves amply that not one of the three periods, here indicated by Æschines, presented even decent encouragement for a reasonable Athenian patriot, to involve his country in warfare against so formidable an enemy. Nothing can be more frivolous than these charges against Demosthenes, of having omitted promising seasons for anti-Macedonian operations. Partly for this reason, probably, Demosthenes does not notice them in his reply; still more, perhaps, on another ground, that it was not safe to speak out what he thought and felt about Alexander. His reply dwells altogether upon the period before the death of Philip. Of the boundless empire subsequently acquired, by the son of Philip, he speaks only to mourn it as a wretched visitation of fortune, which has desolated alike the Hellenic and the barbaric world—in which Athens has been engulfed along with others—and from which even those faithless and trimming Greeks, who helped to aggrandize Philip, have not escaped better than Athens, nor indeed so well.[689] [689] Demosthen. De Coronâ, p. 311-316.