Φιλιππικοί λόγοι, in literature, is a name which is given to the orations of Demosthenes against Philip king of Macedon. The Philippics are reckoned the master-pieces of that great orator: Longinus quotes many instances of the sublime from them; and points out a thousand latent beauties. Indeed that pathetic in which Demosthenes excelled, the frequent interrogations and apophthegms wherewith he attacked the indolence of the Athenians, where could they be better employed? Whatever delicacy there be in the oration against Leptines, the Philippics have the advantage over it, were it only on account of the subject, which gives Demosthenes so fair a field to display his chief talent, we mean, with Longinus, that of moving and afflicting.

Dionysius Halicarnassus ranks the oration on the Halonese among the Philippics, and places it the eighth in order; but though his authority be great, yet that force and majesty wherein Cicero characterizes the Philippics of Demosthenes, seem to exclude the oration on the Halonese out of the number; and authorize the almost universal opinion of the learned, who reject it as spurious. Libanius, Photius, and others, but above all the linguists of the style, and the lovers of the expressions, which reign throughout the whole, father it on Hegesippus.

Philippic is likewise applied to the fourteen orations of Cicero against Mark Antony. Cicero himself gave them this title in his epistles to Brutus; and posterity have found it so just, that it has been continued to our times. Juvenal, Sat. x. calls the second the divine Philippic, and witnesses it to be of great fame, conficiens divina Philippica fama. That orator's intitling his last and most valued orations after the Philippics of Demosthenes shows the high opinion he had of them. Cicero's Philippics cost him his life; Mark Antony having been so irritated with them, that when he arrived at the triumvirate, he procured Cicero's murder, cut off his head, and stuck it up in the very place whence the orator had delivered the Philippics.