Foremost among the men of the peace party was Phocion, an aristocrat by instinct if not by birth; a man admired alike for ability and integrity, so that, though he was no great orator, his speeches always commanded respect. He aspired, like Pericles, to be both a statesman and a general, and in the former capacity had at times to speak in the assembly. Various anecdotes in Plutarch point to his efforts to attain a conciseness which was almost laconic. His utterance was as trenchant as it was brief—Demosthenes called him ‘the knife that cuts my speeches down’; and he had a lively wit, which must have pleased his hearers even though his policy was unpopular. On one occasion, when the people applauded him—which was rare, for he neither courted nor expected popularity—he paused in his speech and asked, ‘Have I said something absurd?’ An unsparing critic of the democracy, as he was nevertheless their faithful servant, he continued, from the purest motives, to urge peace, though the best years of his life were spent in war. He was respected for his high character by Philip and Alexander, and acquiesced in the government instituted by Antipater in 322 B.C., but fell a victim to the hatred of the extreme democrats, and was forced to drink hemlock, at the age of eighty years, in 317 B.C. Demades, his contemporary, and a member of the same political party, is a perfect type of the vulgar demagogue. He depended for his success on a lively wit and a never-failing flow of words. After the battle of Chaeronea, where he was taken prisoner, he became an avowed agent of Philip and Alexander.[393] In consequence of his supposed services to Athens after the destruction of Thebes, he attained great popularity, his statue was erected in the market-place, and the more material benefit of perpetual meals in the Prytaneum was decreed to him. He was put to death by Cassander, the son of Antipater; his fellow-citizens melted down his statues and applied the metal to even baser purposes.[394] His recorded sayings show imagination—‘Alexander is not dead; if he were, the whole world would stink of his corpse’; or again, ‘Macedon without Alexander would be like the Cyclops without his eye’;[395] finally, Athens is to him ‘not the sea-fighter whom our ancestors knew, but an old woman, wearing slippers and supping barley-water.’[396] For the high opinion entertained of his eloquence we may refer to the verdict of Theophrastus—‘Demosthenes is an orator worthy of Athens; Demades is on a higher plane than Athens.’[397] We have no further means of forming any conception of his style.