By his early thirties, Demosthenes was delivering passionate public tirades, now known as The Philippics, against the invading Philip II of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great. His speeches were rousing and so inspiring, notes writer Steven John, that Athenians literally took up arms and prepared to fight their Macedonian invaders upon hearing him speak. John quotes Demosthenes in his now-legendary Third Philippic: You are in your present plight because you do not do any part of your duty, small or great; for of course, if you were doing all that you should do, and were still in this evil
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