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Have you ever been playing in your yard when a strange boy who had been watching from the other side of the fence asked to be let into the game, saying he would show you how to play? You didn’t want him around, and you didn’t want him in, but somehow or other he got in and was soon bossing everybody else.
Well, there was a man named Philip who lived north of Greece, and he had been watching Sparta and Athens—not playing but fighting—and he wanted to get into the game. Philip was king of a little country called Macedonia, but he thought he would like to be king of Greece also, and it seemed to him a good time, when Sparta and Athens were down and out after the Peloponnesian War, to step in and make himself king of that country. Philip was a great fighter, but he didn’t want to fight Greece unless he had to. He wanted to be made king peaceably, and he wanted Greece to do it willingly. He thought up a scheme to bring this about, and this was his scheme.
He knew, as you do, how the Greeks hated the Persians, whom they had driven out of their country over a hundred years before. Although the Persian Wars had taken place so long ago, the Greeks had never forgotten the bravery of their forefathers and the tales of their victories over the Persians. These stories had been told them over and over by their parents and grandparents, and they loved to read and reread them in Herodotus’s history of the world.
So Philip said to the Greeks, “Your ancestors drove the Persians out of Greece, to be sure, but the Persians went back to their country, and you didn’t go after them and punish them as you should have done. You didn’t try to get even with them. Why don’t you go over to Persia and conquer it now, and make the Persians pay for what they did to you?”
Then he slyly added, “Let me help you. I’ll lead you against them.”
No one seemed to see through Philip’s scheme—nobody except one man. This man was an Athenian named Demosthenes.
Demosthenes, when he was a boy, had decided that he would someday be a great speaker or orator, just as you might say you are going to be a doctor, or an aviator, or a teacher when you grow up.
Demosthenes had picked the one profession which by nature he was worst fitted for. In the first place, he had such a very soft, weak voice that one could hardly hear him. Besides, this, he stammered very badly and could not recite even a short poem without hesitating and stumbling so that people laughed at him. It seemed absurd, therefore, that he should aim to be a great speaker.
But Demosthenes practiced and practiced and practiced by himself. He went down on the seashore and put pebbles in his mouth to make it more difficult to speak clearly. Then he spoke to the roaring waves, making believe that he was addressing an angry crowd, who were trying to drown the sound of his voice, so that he would have to speak very loud indeed.
At last, by keeping constantly at it, Demosthenes did become a very great speaker. He spoke so wonderfully that he could make his audience laugh or make them cry whenever he wanted to, and he could persuade them to do almost anything he wished.
Now, Demosthenes was the man who saw through Philip’s scheme for conquering Persia. He knew that Philip’s real aim was to become king of Greece. So he made twelve speeches against him. These speeches were known as Philippics, as they were against Philip. So famous were they that even today we call a speech that bitterly attacks anyone a Philippic .
The Greeks who heard Demosthenes were red-hot against Philip while they listened to him. But as soon as they got away from the sound of Demosthenes’s words, the same Greeks became lukewarm and did nothing to stop Philip.
At last, in spite of everything that Demosthenes had said, Philip had his way and became king over all Greece.
Before, however, he could start out, as he had promised, to conquer Persia, he was killed by one of his own men, so that he was unable to carry out his plan.
Philip had a son named Alexander. Alexander was only twenty years old, but when his father died he became king of Macedonia and also of Greece.
When Alexander was a mere child, he saw some men trying without success to tame a young and very wild horse that shied and reared in the air so that no one was able to ride it. Alexander asked to be allowed to try to ride the animal. Alexander’s father made fun of his son for wanting to attempt what those older than he had been unable to do, but at last gave his consent.
Now, Alexander had noticed what the others, although much older, had not noticed. The horse seemed to be afraid of its own shadow, for young colts are easily frightened by anything dark and moving, as some children are afraid of the dark at night.
Alexander turned the horse around facing the sun, so that its shadow would be behind, out of sight. He then mounted the animal and, to the amazement of all, rode off without any further trouble.
His father was delighted at his son’s cleverness and gave him the horse as a reward. Alexander named the horse Bucephalus and became so fond of him that when the horse died Alexander built a monument to him and named several cities after him.
Now, Alexander was a wonderful boy, but he had such a wonderful teacher named Aristotle that some people think part, at least, of his greatness was due to the teacher.
Aristotle was probably the greatest teacher who ever lived. If there were more great teachers like Aristotle, it seems likely there would have been more great pupils like Alexander.
Aristotle wrote books about all sorts of things—books about the stars called astronomy, books about animals called zoology, and books on other subjects that you probably have never even heard of, such as psychology and politics.
For hundreds of years these books that Aristotle wrote were the schoolbooks that boys and girls studied, and for many years they were the only schoolbooks. Nowadays, schoolbooks usually change every few years after they are written. See how remarkable it was that Aristotle’s schoolbooks should have been used for so long a time.
Aristotle had been taught by a man named Plato, who was also a great teacher and philosopher. Plato had been a pupil of Socrates, so that Aristotle was a kind of grand-pupil of Socrates. You have heard of the Wise Men of the East. These were the three Wise Men of Greece.
Socrates,
Plato,
Aristotle.
Some day you may read what they wrote or said over two thousand years ago.