Ghost on the Throne - James S. Romm [40]
Also in the crowd that day was Demosthenes, himself (though he could not know it) soon to become an exile. He too had come to hear the letter read and then to do all in his power to get Athens exempted from its terms. His city had sent him as its envoy in a bid to keep its proudest overseas possession, the island of Samos. Athens had exiled the native Samians several decades earlier, replacing them with its own citizens in a forcible landgrab. Under the new decree these refugees would be returned and Athens would give the place up.
Alexander had entrusted the reading of his letter to Nicanor, a Greek who enjoyed high standing in the Hellenic world—he was (almost certainly) Aristotle’s nephew and adopted son—and high rank in Alexander’s army as well. As the crowd hushed, Nicanor took his place at the center of the stadium and declaimed his message. “King Alexander thus addresses the exiles from the Greek cities: It is not we who have caused your flight, but we shall be the cause of your return.” A roar went up from the crowd, the voices of twenty thousand exiles celebrating in unison their miraculous deliverance. Demosthenes and his fellow Athenian envoys, however, had little cause to cheer. Their concern was not the public form of the decree but whether Alexander, through his representative Nicanor, was willing to bargain in private.
Demosthenes had another matter to negotiate with Nicanor as well, less momentous perhaps but more urgent: the problem of Harpalus. The Macedonian renegade had returned to Athens some weeks before, though he was turned away on his first approach. This time Harpalus came as a suppliant, seeking protection under religious law, with only two ships and a modest sum of money (still a fortune by Athenian standards). He had gained admittance to the city, probably by bribing the harbormaster in charge of keeping him out. Messengers had soon arrived from the Macedonians, demanding that Harpalus be handed over and his stolen cash returned. On Demosthenes’ advice, the Athenians put Harpalus under house arrest until terms of extradition could be arranged. The embezzled money, seven hundred talents (according to Harpalus’ accounting), was moved to the treasury for safekeeping, and a negotiating team was selected, with Demosthenes at its head.
Demosthenes found himself in the same role Demades and Phocion had played twelve years earlier, when his own fate was hanging in the balance. Now it was he who advised against confrontation, who sought a moderate path, who agreed to sup with the Macedonian devil. He met with Nicanor in a private enclave at Olympia. What passed between them was kept secret, but the route to a solution was clear enough, since Athens wanted Samos and Macedon wanted Harpalus. Some sort of trade-off was arranged, though final say over the fate of Samos was reserved for Alexander himself.
There was yet another delicate issue that was no doubt discussed at that meeting. For the previous year, the Athenians (and other Greeks) had debated whether to worship Alexander as a god. Most of them found it a repugnant idea, and they punished one of its sponsors, Demades, with a heavy fine. But Demosthenes was a pragmatist, not a religious purist. When he returned to Athens from Olympia, he told the Athenians, “Let him be the son of Zeus, and of Poseidon too if he wants,” disguising with dismissive irony his obvious capitulation. If he had bargained with Nicanor over divinization, as seems likely, he at least got a good price. Athens had been granted a stay of the Exiles’ Decree, a pause in which to present its case to Alexander in Babylon. The policy of entente, this time as practiced by Demosthenes, had borne fruit once again.
Hyperides, who hated Alexander as either a man or a god, had once again seen his cause betrayed by Demosthenes’ inexplicable compliance. The fortunes of the anti-Macedonian party seemed once again to be at low ebb. But the turbulent eddies of Athenian politics had taught Hyperides never to trust