Loss of Political Freedom—how far a cause of the decline

At the moment when the theory of oratory had been raised from a technical to a scientific form, its practice began to decline: the great analyst who gave a philosophy to Rhetoric was also the master of Demetrios Phalereus. It is commonly said that the declension of Attic oratory dates from the loss of political freedom. The fact is certain: but those who have tried to see what this oratory in its essence was, will be the first to feel that the connexion between the two things is not altogether self-evident. As to the Deliberative branch, that, clearly, was doomed to decay when the questions which the ekklesia could discuss with a practical result came to be hardly more than municipal. A good notion of the manner in which the province of debate was now restricted may be got from a speech made eight years after Chaeroneia, when Alexander was in the mid-career of his Asiatic victories. An Athenian citizen of the Macedonian party had tried to damage his adversary in a law-suit by insinuating that this adversary had flattered Olympias and Alexander. Hypereides retorts that it would be more to the purpose if, instead of making such charges, Polyeuktos could muster courage to go and denounce the injurious dictation of Macedon before the Panhellenic Congress: but the very way in which this is put implies that it was more than could be expected of ordinary patriotism; and the merit claimed for Euxenippos is not that he has done anything of the kind, but simply that he has shunned association with the active Athenian agents of Alexander.