It appears that during the nine months which succeeded the swearing of the convention, Alexander and his officers (after his return to Macedonia) were active, both by armed force and by mission of envoys, in procuring new adhesions and in re-modelling the governments of various cities suitably to their own views. Complaints of such aggressions were raised in the public assembly of Athens, the only place in Greece where any liberty of discussion still survived. An oration, pronounced by Demosthenes, Hyperides, or one of the contemporary, anti-Macedonian politicians (about the spring or early summer of 335 B. C.),[40] imparts to us some idea both of the Macedonian interventions steadily going on, and of the unavailing remonstrances raised against them by individual Athenian citizens. At the time of this oration, such remonstrances had already been often repeated. They were always met by the macedonizing Athenians with peremptory declarations that the convention must be observed. But in reply, the remonstrants urged, that it was unfair to call upon Athens for strict observance of the convention, while the Macedonians and their partisans in the various cities were perpetually violating it for their own profit. Alexander and his officers (affirms this orator) had never once laid down their arms since the convention was settled. They had been perpetually tampering with the governments of the various cities, to promote their own partisans to power.[41] In Messênê, Sikyon, and Pellênê, they had subverted the popular constitutions, banished many citizens, and established friends of their own as despots. The Macedonian force, destined as a public guarantee to enforce the observance of the convention, had been employed only to overrule its best conditions, and to arm the hands of factious partisans.[42] Thus Alexander in his capacity of Imperator, disregarding all the restraints of the convention, acted as chief despot for the maintenance of subordinate despots in the separate cities.[43] Even at Athens, this imperial authority had rescinded sentences of the dikastery, and compelled the adoption of measures contrary to the laws and constitution.[44] [40] This is the oration περὶ τῶν πρὸς Ἀλέξανδρον συνθηκῶν already more than once alluded to above. Though standing among the Demosthenic works, it is supposed by Libanius as well as by most modern critics not to be the production of Demosthenes—upon internal grounds of style, which are certainly forcible. Libanius says that it bears much resemblance to the style of Hyperides. At any rate, there seems no reason to doubt that it is a genuine oration of one of the contemporary orators. I agree with Böhnecke (Forschungen, p. 629) in thinking that it must have been delivered a few months after the convention with Alexander, before the taking of Thebes.