Demosthenes: Second Philippic —Speaking Truth to Tyranny

Imagine standing before a divided assembly, knowing that the man you are warning them about has sent his own ambassadors into your city to discredit you — and speaking anyway. In 344 BC, that is precisely what Demosthenes did. Philip II of Macedon had dispatched envoys to Athens to rebut the accusations that Demosthenes had leveled on an embassy through the Peloponnese, and Demosthenes responded with what would become his Second Philippic, a masterpiece of deliberative oratory that refused to dress political danger in the language of diplomatic courtesy. Philip was presenting himself as a benefactor of the Greeks, a unifier rather than a conqueror, a friend to Messene and Argos and Thessaly. Demosthenes stripped that presentation bare. He marshaled the historical record — Olynthus annihilated, Thessaly subjugated, the Sacred War exploited — and asked the Athenians to see the pattern behind the gestures. For the Christian reader who picks up this speech twenty-four centuries later, something ancient and urgent is already beginning to resonate. The question of what we do when power clothes itself in the language of peace is not a question that died with the Athenian Assembly.

The Art of Seeing Through

Demosthenes was working in the tradition of Athenian deliberative oratory, which had been refined by the social need to persuade a large, often restless citizen body to take action on matters of grave consequence. His Second Philippic falls into the genre the Greeks called symbouleutikon, counsel-giving oratory, and he shapes it with structural precision. An exordium acknowledges that those who warn against Philip have justice on their side but laments that justice without action accomplishes nothing. He then moves through a sustained analysis of Philip's behavior, each historical example adding weight to the same conclusion: professed friendship is cover for expanding domination. His closing peroratio calls for vigilance and unity. Thematically, the speech stands in a long line of Greek engagement with the tension between eleutheria, freedom, and tyranny, a tension Thucydides had examined in the great debates of the Peloponnesian War. What Demosthenes adds to that tradition is a particular attention to what scholars call parrhesia — frank speech, the willingness to say the dangerous true thing in public, regardless of personal cost. He employs antithesis throughout, setting Philip's stated intentions against his documented actions, and he uses repetition not for rhetorical decoration but as a structural argument: here is the pattern, he says again and again, and a pattern repeated is not coincidence. If you have ever sat through a sermon that opened with a clinical description of a problem you lived with every day, you understand the rhetorical strategy that Demosthenes is employing. He is not describing Philip as an abstraction. He is making Philip felt.

When Prophets and Orators Stand in the Same Room

The Second Philippic makes no reference to the Old Testament, and the Old Testament makes no reference to it. Yet when you hold this speech alongside the prophetic literature, something remarkable happens that is worth examining honestly. Isaiah addressed a Jerusalem that was weighing its strategic options between the great powers of Assyria and Egypt, being offered the same temptations that faced Athens — the security of a powerful patron, the comfort of an alliance that would require only a modest surrender of independence. Isaiah called that option an alliance with death (28:15) and pointed his hearers back to the God who had no need of foreign cavalry. Jeremiah watched the court prophets of Judah reassure a doomed city that peace was secure when it was not (6:14), and he wept for what their false comfort would cost. These are not literary borrowings and no genealogical connection should be inferred between Demosthenes and the Hebrew prophets. They are, rather, two traditions grappling with the same irreducible human problem: power deceives, flattery corrupts, and the people who should sound the alarm are forever tempted to keep quiet. The difference between them is the foundation. Demosthenes grounds his warning in historical evidence and Athenian honor. Isaiah and Jeremiah ground theirs in the character and covenant of Yahweh. Both demand that their audiences open their eyes. Only one tells them what they will find when the enemy is finally at the gate and their own resources have failed.

The Diagnosis Scripture Supplies

The Old Testament does not simply parallel Demosthenes' argument; it corrects it at the root. Demosthenes' analysis of Philip is sharp and accurate, but his analysis of Athens rests on a premise that Scripture will not allow: that the Athenians, if only roused from complacency, possess within themselves the moral and political resources to resist. He appeals to their heritage, their honor, their love of freedom. He treats their failure to act as a practical failure of courage and information rather than as evidence of something more fundamentally broken. But the prophets read human passivity differently. Jeremiah names it as a disease of the heart: the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick (17:9). Isaiah diagnoses the preference for false comfort as a spiritual condition, not merely a tactical miscalculation. The Psalter warns against trusting in princes, in any son of man who cannot save (146:3). What Demosthenes sees as a failure of civic virtue, Scripture identifies as the consequence of a deeper disorder — the human tendency to trust anything and anyone before turning to God. The orator's prescription is better information and stronger resolve. The prophets know that better information delivered to a disordered heart produces only more sophisticated rationalization. Something has to change below the level of argument, and Demosthenes, for all his rhetorical genius, has no instrument for that work.

The Voice Philip Could Not Silence

When the New Testament takes up the theme of parrhesia, it does something astonishing. The frank speech that Demosthenes practiced as a political necessity, at personal cost and with uncertain results, becomes in Acts the defining mark of the apostles after Pentecost. Peter and John speak the name of Jesus before the Sanhedrin with parrhesia (Acts 4:13), the same term the Greek text employs for courageous public declaration. Paul uses it repeatedly to describe the manner of his proclamation. But the NT grounds this boldness in something Demosthenes never had: the Spirit of God as the source and sustainer of the speaker's courage. Jesus warns his disciples in Matthew 24 against false prophets and false messiahs who will come with compelling presentations of peace and security — and he uses language that directly echoes the prophetic tradition. Paul's letter to the Ephesians calls believers to stand firm against principalities and powers, using armor that belongs to God rather than resources assembled from human tradition (6:10–18). The liberty that Demosthenes was fighting to preserve, the Greek eleutheria, finds its truest meaning in Galatians 5:1, where Paul announces that Christ has set us free — not from Macedonian imperialism but from the law, from sin, and from death itself. The freedom worth dying for, it turns out, is not political self-determination. It is the freedom from every power that could ultimately separate a human soul from God.

What the Cross Settles That the Assembly Never Could

Demosthenes could not know what Paul knew: that the problem of deceptive power does not finally yield to eloquence, coalition-building, or civic courage. Athens did not heed the warning. Philip won. His son Alexander swept across the known world, and the Greek polis as a political form never fully recovered. The defeat of Demosthenes' vision was not accidental; it was overdetermined. The principalities and powers of this age — the spiritual forces of darkness that stand behind every human tyranny — are not defeated by better arguments or more heroic resistance. They are defeated by the cross. Paul announces this in Colossians 2:15 with the bluntness of a military dispatch: Christ disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, triumphing over them in the cross. The resurrection is the speech Philip could not rebut. When Christ walked out of the tomb, he did not merely survive — he overturned the verdict that every earthly power relies on for its ultimate coercive authority. The threat of death, which is the final sanction behind every tyranny, was neutralized. Demosthenes told the Athenians to stand up and fight before it was too late. The gospel tells you that the decisive battle has already been won, that the one who fights for your freedom has already absorbed the worst that power could do and emerged victorious, and that his Spirit — the same Spirit who emboldened the apostles before councils that could execute them — is at work in you right now to produce the same courageous speech.

Read This Speech, Then Read Your King

Reading the Second Philippic as a Christian is an act of intellectual stewardship of a kind the early church fathers would have recognized. John Chrysostom, who is likely the greatest preacher in the Greek-speaking church, was shaped by the tradition of Athenian oratory before his conversion redirected its energy toward the exposition of Scripture. Augustine reflected in his treatise on Christian teaching that eloquence belongs to no tradition by right; it can be taken up and baptized for the service of truth. What the ancient church understood is that a text like the Second Philippic does not compete with Scripture — it prepares the reader for Scripture, by cultivating the capacity to recognize dangerous self-deception, to value courageous speech, and to take seriously the cost of remaining silent while the moment for action passes. You will read Demosthenes and become a sharper reader of Isaiah. You will follow his analysis of Philip and understand more viscerally what Paul meant when he warned the Ephesian elders that grievous wolves would enter the flock, not sparing it (Acts 20:29). The orator sharpens your eye. Scripture alone can transform your heart.

The One Speech That Has Not Ended

Demosthenes delivered his Second Philippic once, in 344 BC, and its immediate effect was modest. Philip continued to consolidate his power. Athens continued to delay. The speech survives because its rhetorical power and moral seriousness were recognized by generations who copied and studied it, even after the political situation it addressed had long been settled. But there is another speech that began before the foundation of the world and has never ended — the speech of God's self-disclosure, which the writer of Hebrews says reached its final, fullest, and unsurpassable expression when the Son spoke, not in words only but in a life, a death, and a resurrection (1:1–2). That speech does not lament Athenian inaction. It does not offer analysis and then wait to see whether its audience will respond wisely. It accomplishes what it sets out to accomplish. It creates the freedom it proclaims. If the Holy Spirit is prompting something in you as you sit with this, it is not a call to more clever political analysis or more eloquent civic rhetoric. It is the call of the one who disarmed every power that holds you and now holds out to you the freedom for which you were made. Do not be the Athenian Assembly. Answer him.

 

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Xenophon: Anabasis - True Leadership in Crisis

Imagine standing at the edge of a foreign city with ten thousand armed companions at your side, the man you came to serve lying dead on a distant plain, the generals who were supposed to lead you home betrayed, seized, and murdered over a peace conference meal, and a hostile empire of uncountable soldiers between you and the sea. No guide, no cavalry, no supplies, no one in command. That is precisely where Xenophon and the famous Ten Thousand found themselves in the autumn of 401 BC, roughly fifteen hundred miles from the nearest Greek city. Xenophon's Anabasis, the account of their desperate march from the heart of the Persian Empire back to the Black Sea, is one of antiquity's most arresting stories, a narrative of crisis, courage, and unlikely survival that has gripped readers across two and a half millennia. You may not have heard of it, but reading it carefully will change the way you understand leadership, human nature, and the incomparable grace of the God who led his own people through the wilderness long before Xenophon's soldiers ever saw Persia.

A World of Soldiers, Oaths, and Scheming Kings

The political world that produced the Anabasis was shaped by decades of war. The great Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, ending in 404 BC with Athens's defeat and humiliation, had left thousands of skilled Greek soldiers with no employment and no loyalty to spare. Into this world stepped Cyrus the Younger, the charismatic younger son of the Persian king Darius II, who harbored plans to take the Persian throne from his brother Artaxerxes II. He recruited his Greek mercenaries under false pretenses, claiming the campaign was against a local troublemaker, the Pisidians of Asia Minor. Only when the army was far inside Persia, past the point of easy withdrawal, did most soldiers understand they were marching to contest a throne. The decisive battle at Cunaxa, near Babylon, in September 401 BC demonstrated both the Greeks' extraordinary fighting skill and the fatal flaw in the entire enterprise: Cyrus, with victory apparently within reach on the Greek right wing, spotted his brother in the center of the Persian line and charged at him personally. He wounded Artaxerxes but was cut down by the king's bodyguard. The Ten Thousand had won their battle; the war was already over. What followed was treachery layered upon treachery. The Persian commander Tissaphernes invited the Greek generals to a conference under solemn oath of safe conduct, and there had them seized and executed. Five generals, including the formidable Clearchus and the young, idealistic Proxenus, were dead. The army had no leaders, no route, and no hope visible on any horizon.

Homer, Moses, and the Pattern of Exile

Xenophon wrote in the tradition of Greek historiography shaped by Thucydides and in the literary world saturated by Homer, and the Anabasis resonates with the Odyssey's deep pattern of the heroic return through dangerous waters and hostile shores. The connection is structural and thematic rather than a matter of direct quotation: both narratives follow a man who must find his way home through enemies and wilderness by a combination of intelligence, courage, and divine favor. But a far deeper and more theologically significant pattern links the Anabasis to the Old Testament, not because Xenophon knew Moses, but because both texts are drawing on the same recurring structure of human experience that God himself embedded in history and then interpreted through Scripture. A large community is trapped in a foreign empire. Its ordinary resources of security and leadership have been stripped away. A reluctant and apparently unsuitable leader emerges, frames the people's desperate situation in theological terms, and leads them through mountainous wilderness toward a body of water that signifies freedom and home. Israel crossed the Red Sea; the Ten Thousand crested Mount Theches in Armenia and wept at the sight of the Black Sea below. The emotional texture of that moment in Xenophon's account is unforgettable: "they fell to embracing one another, generals and officers and all, and the tears trickled down their cheeks." It is one of antiquity's most moving images. But the biblical theologian reads it alongside Moses and Miriam singing on the far shore of the Red Sea and recognizes the difference immediately: Israel sang to the God who parted the sea; the Ten Thousand wept at a sea that no one parted for them. They got there by their own courage and their leader's genius.

Xenophon Rises: The Night the Army Was Reborn

The pivot of the entire narrative occurs in Book III, in the middle of the night following the murder of the generals. The army is camped in despair, unable to sleep, unable to eat, paralyzed by what Xenophon describes with striking economy: men lay where they were, thinking of their fathers, their wives, their children, people they expected never to see again. Then a young Athenian who had come to the expedition not as a soldier but as a private citizen on his friend's invitation pulls himself up from his blanket and calls a meeting. The speech Xenophon delivers to Proxenus's captains in that darkness is one of the most sophisticated pieces of crisis leadership in all ancient literature. He begins with shared analysis of the situation, moves through an emotional appeal to Greek honor, then makes a decisive rhetorical move: he offers to follow rather than to lead, making clear that he himself is willing to act but is not claiming command. Within moments the captains are pressing the role upon him. This is Xenophon the student of Socrates: he knows that a question is more persuasive than an assertion and that apparent reluctance is the most effective form of leadership bid. What follows, the all-night reorganization of the army, the election of new generals, the dawn assembly in which Xenophon addresses the full force and reframes their entire situation, is a masterclass in practical leadership grounded in character and genuine care for the people being led. He dresses in his finest armor, he tells the soldiers, because if the gods grant victory, the finest attire matches victory best, and if he must die, then a man who has aspired to the noblest should look the part. And at precisely the moment he speaks of safety, a soldier sneezes, the whole army spontaneously bows in worship, and Xenophon immediately proposes a communal vow of thank-offerings to Zeus the Savior. The theological instinct is genuine: he understands that the army needs not just a plan but a covenant, not just strategy but the confidence that the gods are on their side.

What the Old Testament Sees That Xenophon Could Not

The Old Testament is the perfect companion text to the Anabasis because it takes the same questions with absolute seriousness: What keeps a community together in the desert? What does a leader owe the people who depend on him? What does surviving the wilderness mean? But the Old Testament goes further than Xenophon at every decisive point. Deuteronomy 8, which Moses delivers on the border of the promised land after forty years of wilderness wandering, offers the theological interpretation of the Exodus that Xenophon could not write for the Anabasis. "You shall remember the whole way that the LORD your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart." The wilderness, for Moses, was not merely a route but a curriculum. God designed it to strip away every reliance on human sufficiency and produce a people who knew in their bones that man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD. The Ten Thousand were tested equally severely, enduring frostbite in the Armenian highlands, starvation in the Kurdish mountains, and the constant grinding pressure of an enemy that harassed without ever quite destroying them. But the lesson Xenophon draws from the wilderness is not the lesson of Deuteronomy 8. His lesson is confidence in Greek discipline. The Old Testament insists the real lesson is dependence on divine grace. Both lessons are true; only one reaches deep enough to address the condition of the human heart.

The Gospel Exposes the Gap

The New Testament reads the Anabasis with admiration and with a searching diagnosis. Romans 5:8 states simply that God demonstrates his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Xenophon's entire theology of divine favor rests on the premise that the gods reward the faithful and punish the treacherous, a premise that is morally serious and practically important but that the gospel dismantles from the foundation. The God of the New Testament does not wait for his people to keep their oaths before he acts. He acts while they are still breaking every covenant they have ever made, still scattered in the far country, still eating with the pigs in the parable Jesus told. The contrast with the Anabasis's framework of merit and reward could not be sharper or more important. The Ten Thousand survived because they were brave enough and disciplined enough to earn survival. You and I, the New Testament declares without softening the point, would not have survived the scrutiny of a perfectly just God for a single afternoon. What we receive from Christ is not what we earned but what he purchased at infinite cost, and the homecoming he provides is not to a Greek city but to the Father's house. John 10:11 states that the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep, and the present tense holds that self-giving before us in permanent immediacy. Xenophon led through the wilderness and came home alongside his people. Jesus led through death and came home carrying the ones who could not have made the journey on their own.

What Reading This Changes

There are four things you will understand differently after reading the Anabasis with your Bible open beside it. You will understand the Exodus more vividly, because Xenophon has given you imaginative access to what it feels like to be a large community in desperate straits, without leadership, without resources, without any obvious path forward, and the sheer visceral relief of finally seeing water that means you might live. You will understand the biblical portrait of human nature more clearly, because Xenophon's character sketches of Clearchus, Proxenus, and Menon show you what human virtue looks like at its best and its worst, and the comparison with the gospel's diagnosis of the heart deepens your sense of what grace actually costs. You will understand Christian leadership more concretely, because Xenophon's leadership philosophy, for all that it falls short of the gospel's depths, is one of the best illustrations in ancient literature of what servant leadership looks like in practice: transparent motivation, genuine care for those being led, willingness to share the hardship rather than merely direct it, and the disciplined cultivation of the kind of character that can be trusted when everything else has failed. And you will understand the Holy Spirit's work in your own life more gratefully, because reading the Anabasis makes plain what human resourcefulness and courage can achieve on their own, and what they cannot. The Ten Thousand got home. They did not get new hearts.

The Sea That Remains to Be Crossed

The soldiers' shout on Mount Theches, "the sea! the sea!", is one of antiquity's great emotional moments, and you should let it move you, because it is genuinely moving. Men who had not expected to live, who had marched through mountains and snowfields and hostile tribes, who had buried friends along every mile of the route, who had suffered the particular grief of betrayal by those they trusted, finally saw that they might actually make it home. The Holy Spirit can use that image to show you something true about the gospel. There is a sea that remains to be crossed, not the Black Sea but the final distance between fallen human experience and the Father's house, and Christ has already crossed it on your behalf. He is, as the book of Hebrews declares, the pioneer and perfecter of faith who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. If you have not yet trusted him, today is the day to do what Xenophon could not: not to elect yourself a leader, but to follow the one who has already secured your homecoming at the cost of his own life. And if you have trusted him, let the Ten Thousand's tears remind you of what you have been given and what awaits you, and worship the God who not only showed you the sea but carried you across it.

 

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300

If you are squeamish and don’t like violence, then don’t see the movie “300”. Three fourths of the movie is dedicated to all-out warfare, brutality and gore. And the added sexual content doesn’t make it any easier to watch. Decapitation, severing of arms, legs, hands and other body parts flood the screen in stylized battle scenes shot in stop-action, slow motion and choreographed with dance-like moves. And then there is blood spurting all over with plenty of dead bodies hung up, stuck on posts, made into walls and just lying around.

But beside the gore, there are some good features to 300. First, courage and bravery reign supreme. This movie is about Sparta and the elite fighting force that culture produced. Leonidas, the king of Sparta, illegally takes 300 of his elite personal guard to defend Sparta from the million man Persian army, composed of armies from 100 nations. Brutally bred and trained as professional soldiers, Spartans feared nothing and were willing to sacrifice their lives for their city. Facing overwhelming odds, Leonidas and his 300 warriors don’t flinch but actually look forward to the battle. One Spartan hopes out loud to perhaps find one warrior out the million who would prove to be worthy of his death. Queen Gorgo tells Leonidas, “Come back with your shield or on it.” Wimping out is not an option.

Second, Spartans work as a unit, so that one’s strength is found in one’s companion. Leonidas says, “A Spartan's strength is the warrior next to him.” Spartan military strategy depends on coordinated defense and offense, so victory depends entirely on the whole army working together as a single unit. Leonidas is selfless and willingly puts himself in the thick of the battle to aid his comrades. In contrast, Xerxes, the Persian emperor, watches from a distance and doesn’t take part in the battle but merely sends army after army into battle without regard for their lives.

Third, Spartans believe in freedom and are willing to die for it. “Freedom is never free,” says Queen Gorgo. King Leonidas is ready and willing to lay down his life so that his city might remain free from the tyranny of Xerxes and the Persians. There are many times that Leonidas and his captains remind the rest that they are fighting for freedom. Leonidas refuses to bow to Xerxes, even after Xerxes offers to make him the warlord of all Greece if he would merely bow before him. In the end, Leonidas pretends to bow but only so that he can get a final chance to throw a spear at Xerxes.

While Sparta’s bravery and fighting prowess are impressive, there were some major drawbacks to Spartan culture. First, it was cruel, brutal and uncaring. In order to create brave soldiers many children had to be thrown away at birth because they were unfit (survival of the fittest to the max).

Second, the Spartans were incapable of sharing their feelings. Whenever you work to block out the negative emotions of fear and other weakness, you also make it impossible to feel the positive emotions of love and joy. Leonidas couldn’t even tell his wife, Queen Gorgo, that he loved her when he left for battle, nor could he relay a message of love when he sent his friend back to tell their story. When asked what he wanted to say to his wife, Leonidas replied, “Nothing. She already knows how I feel.” In fact, when Leonidas’ captain sees his son killed in the fighting he handles his grief by filling his heart with hate. Sparta might be cool and macho, but most intelligent men wouldn’t want to live there.

Third, Sparta didn’t develop much of a culture. In contrast, Athens developed one of the richest cultures of the ancient world. Athens’ philosophy, art and writings still influence us today, but very little of Sparta’s culture affects us today. A culture built around war cannot produce much of lasting value.

There are some similarities between king Leonidas and Jesus. Leonidas willingly laid down his life for his brothers. One soldier says, as he lies dying, “It is an honor to die at your side.” Leonidas replies, “It was an honor to live at yours.” Leonidas would rather die with his men than betray them and his city for his own personal gain. Xerxes tempts Leonidas by offering to make him the warlord of all Greece if he would simply bow down to him. The scene echoes Satan’s temptation of Christ in the wilderness, where Satan offered all the kingdoms of the world if Jesus would simply bow down and worship him. The temptation of power and glory at the expense of truth, virtue and obedience to God confronts many men even today. It takes strong character and values to withstand this temptation, especially if the alternative is personal loss, pain or even death. To Leonidas’ credit, he refuses to accept personal gain at the expense of his values.

Amazing Grace

William Wilberforce is powerfully portrayed in the movie Amazing Grace. Wilberforce’s unrelenting attack on the slave trade is one of history’s greatest inspirations. The movie is expertly scripted, skillfully acted and perfectly edited to create a balanced, attention holding, inspiring story that you should see.

The story also touches upon Wilberforce’s Christian faith and the inspiration of his old pastor, John Newton. Newton was a slave ship owner who accepted Christ, gave up the slave trade, and became active in the abolitionist movement in England. After his conversion, he wrote one of the most familiar hymns in history, Amazing Grace. John Newton’s hymn, testimony and encouragement were instrumental in Wilberforce’s struggle to abolish slavery in England.

Wilberforce worked incessantly against slavery, until his health gave out after he was charged with sedition as war with France took center stage. Wilberforce retired to the country a defeated man and vowed never to speak against slavery again. However, he could not remain silent, and at the urging of his new wife and after reading his old pastor John Newton’s memoirs on the horrors of slave trade, Wilberforce returned to parliament and renewed the fight.

The courage, passion, and tenacity of Wilberforce inspired me. It is impossible to see Wilberforce’s dedication without evaluating your own. It also reminded me how important it is to keep on encouraging one another because it is impossible to keep fighting against evil without the support and encouragement of others. We all need someone to help us through the discouragement and failure, especially those who seem to not need it.

I highly recommend this movie. It has not been publicized as much as most other films; nevertheless, it is one of the best movies of the year so far. This is a “must see” movie.

Measure for Measure

Shakespeare’s play Measure for Measure, first performed on December 26, 1604, is sometimes called a dark comedy, but it really doesn’t fit any easy categorization. The story revolves around the question of true morality, and involves intricate plot twists and secret identities.

The Duke of Vienna is a wise leader but is not effective in maintaining order, so he pretends to go away on business but disguises himself as a friar in order to spy on the town while he is thought to be away. He puts the town in charge of Angelo, a strict legalistic man who quickly arrests Claudio on charges of fornication for getting his fiancé pregnant before they were able to marry. Even though Claudio intends to marry her, Angelo sentences him to death.

Isabella, a chaste nun and Claudio’s sister, begs Angelo to pardon Claudio. Angelo agrees to pardon Claudio on the condition that Isabella sleep with him. She refuses and tells Claudio, who begs her to save his life by giving up her chastity. Isabella is furious with Claudio and leaves him to die.

However, the Duke, disguised as a friar, tells Isabella that there is another way. He tells her to agree to Angelo’s terms but send a different woman in her place. The woman, Mariana, was engaged to Angelo five years earlier, but he broke off the engagement because her dowry was lost at sea. Angelo sleeps with Mariana thinking it is Isabella. In the morning, however, he goes back on his word and orders that Claudio be executed and his head sent to him.

The Duke has the jailor exchange Claudio with a condemned pirate, and sends his head to Angelo instead. Isabella is overcome with grief at her brother’s supposed death and threatens to take her case to the Duke when he returns. Angelo laughs because he is convinced the Duke will believe him over some crazy woman.

When the Duke returns, Isabella pleads her case before him, but he pretends to side with the Duke. Angelo is put in charge of the investigation, so he brings in witnesses to discredited Isabella and she is thrown into prison. Angelo also sends for the friar, the disguised Duke, who charged Angelo with making disparaging remarks about the Duke. When the friar is brought in Angelo accuses the friar of speaking against the Duke and calls the jailor to imprison him. However, the Duke takes off his disguise and everyone becomes aware of Angelo’s hypocrisy.

Angelo is sent to be executed and Isabella is released. Mariana pleads for Angelo’s pardon, and the Duke agrees only if he marries Mariana. The Duke eventually brings in Claudio to Isabella’s astonishment. After everyone is forgiven, the Duke proposes to Isabella and they agree to marry.

While the plot is somewhat unrealistic, it clearly points out the hypocrisy of those who claim public virtue while acting the opposite in private. The tension between chastity and loyalty is also brought into play but not developed. The concept of mercy is more central to the story, as everyone ends up pardoned and wrongs made right.


The following quote is from Lucio, Claudio’s friend, as he pleads with Isabella to go and do what she can to save her brother. She is reluctant to act, so he says:

Our doubts are traitors
And make us lose the good we oft might win
By fearing to attempt.


When faced with difficult decisions, it is helpful to remember these words, since our action may be what is needed to right a wrong, or to prevent a great evil from occurring. All that evil needs to succeed is for good men, and women, to do nothing. But if we act, then we can have a part in stemming the tide of evil in our world.