Demosthenes

Demosthenes was an Athenian statesman and orator who opposed the expansion of Macedon. His speeches urged resistance to Philip II and later made him a symbol of civic independence, though Athens was defeated at Chaeronea.

In non-fiction, Demosthenes is discussed in Plutarch’s The Age of Alexander and Diodorus Siculus’s The Library, Books 16-20. In Plutarch’s The Age of Alexander, it is useful for people-centred accounts of fourth-century Greece and Macedon, including the political world around Demosthenes, Phocion and Alexander, the fall of the independent city-state order and the campaigns that carried Macedonian power into Asia.