Demosthenes is the voice and symbol of anti-Macedonian feeling; he and other orators again flee Athens at the approach of Antipater, the regent in Macedon.
Demades is reinstated in 322 as an Athenian citizen so that he can negotiate a peace with Antipater concluding the Lamian War.
Before setting out, he persuades the citizens to pass the death sentence upon his former friend Demosthenes and his followers.
The result of Demades' embassy, which includes Athenian statesman and general Phocion, is a peace disadvantageous to the Athenians.
Phocion, while managing to reduce his city's huge indemnities, is forced to accept the occupation of Athens' port, Piraeus.
Antipater, abandoning Alexander's liberal policy, forces Athens to accept an oligarchical government subservient to him and arranges death sentences for Hyperides and Demosthenes, leaders of the anti-Macedonian party.
Phocion rules Athens as Macedonia's agent.
Theophrastus, after receiving his first introduction to philosophy in Lesbos from one Leucippus or Alcippus, had proceeded to Athens, and become a member of the Platonic circle.
After Plato's death he had attached himself to Aristotle, and in all probability accompanied him to Stagira.
The intimate friendship of Theophrastus with Callisthenes, the fellow-pupil of Alexander the Great, the mention made in his will of an estate belonging to him at Stagira, and the repeated notices of the town and its museum in the nine books of his Enquiry into plants and his six books of Causes of Plants point to this conclusion.
Aristotle, who dies in 322, in his will made him guardian of his children, bequeathed to him his library and the originals of his works, and had in 322 designated him as his successor at the Lyceum on his own removal to Chalcis.
Eudemus of Rhodes also had some claims to this position, and Aristoxenus is said to have resented Aristotle's choice.
As leader of the Lyceum’s Peripatetic school of philosophy (so named for the prominent peripatos, or covered walking place, that belongs to the school building, Theophrastus elaborates on metaphysical and psychological theory and emphasizes the study of the natural sciences.
He will presides over the Peripatetic school for thirty-five years, and die at the age of eighty-five according to Diogenes.
He is said to have remarked "we die just when we are beginning to live".
