the ideal of Panhellenic unity had been put before Greece by Gorgias and Isocrates, its realization did not go further than the formation of leagues of an unstable character, each subject, as a rule, to the more or less tyrannical domination of some one member. Probably the power which was most generally feared in the Greek world was that of the King of Persia. Several times in recent years (and particularly in 387 and 367) he had been requested to make and enforce a general settlement of Hellenic affairs. The settlement of 387 (called the King's Peace, or the Peace of Antalcidas, after the Spartan officer who negotiated it) had ordained the independence of the Greek cities, small and great, with the exception of those in Asia Minor, which were to form part of the Persian Empire, and of Lemnos, Imbros, and Scyros, which were to belong to Athens as before. The attempt to give effect to the arrangement negotiated in 367 failed, and the terms of the Peace of Antalcidas, though it was still appealed to, when convenient, as a charter of liberty, also came to be disregarded. But there was always a sense of the possibility or the danger of provoking the great king to exert his strength, or at least to use his wealth, to the detriment of some or all of the Greek states; though at the moment of which we are speaking (about 355) the Persian Empire itself was suffering from recent disorders and revolutions, and the king had little leisure for interfering in the affairs of Greece. It was to the department of foreign and inter-Hellenic affairs that Demosthenes principally devoted himself. His earliest political speeches, however, were composed and delivered in furtherance of prosecutions for the crime of proposing illegal legislation. These were the speeches against Androtion (spoken by Diodorus in 355) and against Leptines (in 354). Both these were written to denounce measures which Demosthenes regarded as dishonest or unworthy of Athenian traditions. In the former he displays that desire for clean-handed administration which is so prominent in some of his later speeches; and in the prosecution of Leptines he shows his anxiety that Athens should retain her reputation for good faith. Both speeches, like those of the year 352 against Timocrates (spoken by Diodorus), and against Aristocrates (spoken by Euthycles), are remarkable for thoroughness of argument and for the skill which is displayed in handling legal and political questions, though, like almost all Athenian forensic orations, they are sometimes sophistical in argument.