You would, I expect, men of Athens, accept it as the equivalent of a large amount of money, if it could be made clear to you what will prove our best policy in the matters now under discussion. This then being so, you are bound to give an eager hearing to all who offer advice. For not only if someone comes forward with a well-considered plan, could you hear and accept it, but also I count it part of your good fortune that more than one speaker may be inspired with suitable suggestions on the spur of the moment, so that out of the multitude of proposals the choice of the best should not be difficult. [2]

The present crisis, Athenians, calls on you, almost with an audible voice, to take into your own hands the control of your interests in the North, if you are really anxious to safeguard them. But, I confess, our attitude puzzles me. My own idea would be to vote an expedition at once, to make instant preparation for its dispatch, thus avoiding our previous blunder, and to send ambassadors to state our intentions and watch events. [3] Our chief ground for alarm is that this man, so unscrupulous, so quick to seize his opportunity, now yielding a point when it suits his purpose, now threatening—and his threats may well carry conviction—now misrepresenting us and our failure to intervene, may divert to his own purpose and wrest from us something of vital importance. [4] And yet, men of Athens, it is reasonable to suggest that the very thing which makes Philip's position most redoubtable is also most encouraging for you. For the swift and opportune movements of war he has an immense advantage over us in the fact that he is the sole director of his own policy, open or secret, that he unites the functions of a general, a ruler and a treasurer, and that he is always at the head of his army; but when it comes to a composition such as he would gladly make with Olynthus, the tables are turned. [5] The eyes of the Olynthians are opened to the fact that they are now fighting not for glory, not for a strip of territory, but to avert the overthrow and enslavement of their fatherland. They know how he treated those Amphipolitans who betrayed their city and those Pydnaeans who opened their gates to him. And a despotism, I take it, is as a rule mistrusted by free constitutions, especially when they are near neighbors. [6] I bid you grasp these facts, men of Athens, and weigh well all the important considerations. Make up your minds; rouse your spirits; put your heart into the war, now or never. Pay your contributions cheerfully; serve in person; leave nothing to chance. You have no longer the shadow of an excuse for shirking your duty. [7] It was long the common talk that the Olynthians must be made to fight Philip; and now it has come about in the natural course, and that too in a way that suits you admirably. For if they had plunged into war in reliance on your advice, they would perhaps have proved uncertain allies and only half-hearted in their resolve; but now that their hatred of Philip is the outcome of their own grievances, it is natural that their hostility should have a firm base in their apprehensions and their experiences. [8] Men of Athens, you must not let slip the opportunity that offers, nor make the blunder you have so often made before. When we returned from the Euboean expedition1 and Hierax and Stratocles, the envoys of Amphipolis, mounted this platform and bade you sail and take over their city, if we had shown the same earnestness in our own cause as in defence of the safety of Euboea, Amphipolis would have been yours at once and you would have been relieved of all your subsequent difficulties. [9] Once again, when news came of the siege of Pydna, of Potidaea, of Methone, of Pagasae,2 and of the rest of them—not to weary you with a complete catalogue—if we had at that time shown the required zeal in marching to the help of the first that appealed, we should have found Philip today much more humble and accommodating. Unfortunately we always neglect the present chance and imagine that the future will right itself, and so, men of Athens, Philip has us to thank for his prosperity. We have raised him to a greater height than ever king of Macedonia reached before. Today this opportunity comes to us from the Olynthians unsought, a fairer opportunity than we have ever had before. [10]

Men of Athens, let anyone fairly reckon up the blessings we have received of the gods, and though much is amiss, none the less his gratitude will be great—and rightly so: for our many losses in the war3 may be justly imputed to our own supineness; that we did not suffer these losses long ago and that this opportunity of alliance affords us some compensation, if we choose to accept it, this I for my part should put down as a signal instance of the favor of the gods. [11] I suppose it is with national as with private wealth. If a man keeps what he gains, he is duly grateful to fortune; if he loses it by his own imprudence, he loses along with it the sense of gratitude. So in national affairs, those who fail to use their opportunities aright, fail also to acknowledge the good that the gods have given; for every advantage in the past is judged in the light of the final issue. It is therefore our duty, men of Athens, to keep a careful eye on the future, that by restoring our prosperity we may efface the discredit of the past. [12] But if we leave these men too in the lurch, Athenians, and then Olynthus is crushed by Philip, tell me what is to prevent him from marching henceforward just where he pleases. I wonder if any one of you in this audience watches and notes the steps by which Philip, weak at first, has grown so powerful. First he seized Amphipolis, next Pydna, then Potidaea, after that Methone, lastly he invaded Thessaly. [13] Then having settled Pherae, Pagasae, Magnesia, and the rest of that country to suit his purposes, off he went to Thrace, and there, after evicting some of the chiefs and installing others, he fell sick. On his recovery, he did not relapse into inactivity, but instantly assailed Olynthus. His campaigns against Illyrians and Paeonians and King Arybbas and any others that might be mentioned, I pass over in silence. [14]

“Well,” some of you may say, “why tell us this now?” Because, men of Athens, I want you to know and realize two things: first, what an expensive game it is to squander your interests one by one; and secondly, the restless activity which is ingrained in Philip's nature, and which makes it impossible for him ever to rest on his laurels. But if Philip adopts the principle that he ought always to be improving his position, and you the principle of never facing your difficulties resolutely, just reflect what is likely to be the end of it all. [15] Seriously, is anyone here so foolish as not to see that our negligence will transfer the war from Chalcidice to Attica? Yet if that comes to pass, I am afraid, men of Athens, that just as men who borrow money recklessly at high interest enjoy a temporary accommodation only to forfeit their estates in the end, so we may find that we have paid a heavy price for our indolence, and because we consult our own pleasure in everything, may hereafter come to be forced to do many of the dfficult things for which we had no liking, and may finally endanger our possessions here in Attica itself. [16]

Now someone may tell me that to find fault is easy and in any one's power, but that it needs a statesman to expound the policy demanded by our circumstances. But I am not unaware, men of Athens, that if anything goes wrong, you often vent your disappointment, not on the responsible agents, but on those who happen to have addressed you last. I shall not, however, consult my own safety by keeping back what I believe to be for your true interests. [17] I suggest then that the case calls for two distinct expeditions; one military force must be dispatched to rescue their cities for the Olynthians, and a second force, both naval and military, to ravage Philip's territory. If you neglect either of them, I am afraid your campaign will prove abortive. [18] For if you send a marauding expedition, he will stand on the defensive until he has made himself master of Olynthus, and then he will easily march to the relief of his own territory; or if you confine yourselves to helping Olynthus, he will know that his base is secure and will give close and undivided attention to his operations, until at last he overcomes the resistance of the besieged. Our expedition, you see, must be on a large scale and twofold. [19]

Such are my views on the expeditionary force. With regard to the supply of money, you have money, men of Athens; you have more than any other nation has for military purposes. But you appropriate it yourselves, to suit your own pleasure. Now if you will spend it on the campaign, you have no need of a further supply; if not, you have—or rather, you have no supply at all. “What!” someone will cry, “do you actually move to use this money for military purposes?” Of course I do not. [20] Only it is my opinion that we must provide soldiers and that there must be one uniform system of pay in return for service. Your opinion, however, is that you should, without any trouble, just appropriate the money for your festivals.4 Then the only alternative is a war-tax, heavy or light, as circumstances demand. Only money we must have, and without money nothing can be done that ought to be done. There are other proposals before you for raising supplies; choose whichever of them you think expedient, and, while there is yet time, grapple with the problem. [21]

It is worth while, however, to observe and consider how Philip stands today. His present prospects are not so bright or satisfactory as they seem and as a superficial observer might pronounce them; nor would he ever have provoked this war had he thought that he would be bound to fight himself. He hoped that on his first entry he would carry all before him, and he finds himself completely mistaken. This unforeseen result confounds and discourages him; and besides there is the question of Thessaly. [22] The Thessalians were always, of course, born traitors, and Philip finds them today just what everyone has found them in the past. They have formally resolved to demand the restitution of Pagasae and have hindered him from fortifying Magnesia. I have also been informed that they will no longer hand over to him the profits of their harbors and markets, on the ground that this sum ought to be applied to the government of Thessaly and not find its way into Philip's coffers. Now if he is deprived of this source of revenue, he will be hard put to it to pay for the maintenance of his mercenaries. [23] But surely we must assume that your Paeonian or Illyrian or any other of these tribes would prefer freedom and independence to slavery. They are not accustomed to acknowledge a master, and Philip is by all accounts a particularly harsh one. And indeed that is not surprising. Undeserved success engenders folly in unbalanced minds, and therefore it often proves harder to keep than to win prosperity. [24] Look then, Athenians, upon his difficulties as your opportunity. Be prompt to take up the challenge. Send embassies when necessary. Take the field in person. Rouse all the other states. Reflect how eagerly Philip would march against you, if he had such a chance as we have, and if the war were on our frontiers. Are you not ashamed if, having the opportunity, you lack the courage to do to him what he would certainly do to you if he could? [25]

One point more, men of Athens. Do not forget that you can today choose whether you must fight there or Philip must fight here. If Olynthus holds out, you will fight there, to the detriment of his territory, while you enjoy in security the land that is your home. But if Philip takes Olynthus, who is to prevent his marching hither? The Thebans? [26] It may be an unduly harsh thing to say, but they will join heartily in the invasion. The Phocians then? What! the men who cannot protect their own country without your help? Any others? “But, my friend,” cries someone, “he will not wish to attack us.” Nay, it would be a crowning absurdity if, having the power, he should lack the will to carry out the threat which today he utters at the risk of his reputation for sanity. [27] But indeed I think you want no speech to prove how vast is the difference between a war here and a war yonder. Why, if you were obliged to take the field yourselves for a bare month, drawing from Attica the necessary supplies—I am assuming that there is no enemy in this country—I suppose your farmers would lose more than the sum spent upon the whole of the previous war.5 But if war comes within our borders, at what figure must we assess our losses? And you must add the insolence of the enemy and the ignominy of our position, greater than any loss in a wise man's estimation. [28]

It is the duty of all of you to grasp the significance of these facts, and to send out an expedition that shall thrust back the war into Macedonia: it is the duty of the well-to-do, that spending but a fraction of the wealth they so happily possess, they may enjoy the residue in security; of our fighters, that gaining experience of war on Philip's soil, they may prove the formidable guardians of an inviolate fatherland; of the statesmen, that they may give a ready account of their stewardship, for as is the issue of these events, so will be your judgement of their policy. On every ground may that issue be prosperous!

1 The Athenians took Euboea from the Thebans in 357.

2 In 357, 356, 354, and 352 respectively.

3 i.e. the war about the possession of Amphipolis.

4 The Theoric Fund had been instituted by Pericles, nominally to enable the poorer citizens to attend the public festivals. It would seem that definite sums were alloted to the various departments of State expenditure, and the surplus was at the disposal of the democracy for special military or other objects. Somewhere about 354 Eubulus, who was one of the board which controlled the Theoric Fund, carried a law appropriating to it the whole of the surplus revenue. He does not seem to have starved the defensive services, but he left no provision for a war, except by means of an extraordinary levy or ἐσφορά. Either in 360, or perhaps in 349 before the delivery of the third Olynthiac, an attempt to revert to the earlier arrangement was followed by the usual γραφὴ παρανόμων, and Eubulus is alleged to have confirmed the bad system by making it a capital offence even to propose a diversion of the fund. Demosthenes approaches the subject with a studied show of embarrassment.

5 The war about Amphipolis. Demosthenes reckons its cost at 1500 talents （Dem. 2.28）.

On many occasions, men of Athens, one may, I think, recognize the manifest favor of heaven towards our city, and not least at the present crisis. That Philip has found men willing to fight him, situated on his frontiers and possessed of considerable power, above all so determined that they regard any accommodation with him as both delusive and fatal to their own country—this has all the appearance of a super-human, a divine beneficence. [2] So the time has come, men of Athens, to look to it that we do not prove more unfriendly to ourselves than circumstances have been, for we shall show ourselves the meanest of mankind, if we abandon not only the cities and the places which we once called our own, but the very allies that fortune has raised up for us and the chances she throws in our way. [3]

Now I do not choose, Athenians, to enumerate the resources of Philip and by such arguments to call on you to rise to the occasion. Do you ask why? Because it seems to me that any dissertation on that topic is a tribute to his enterprise, but a record of our failure. For the higher he has raised himself above his proper level, the more he wins the admiration of the world; but the more you have failed to improve your opportunities, the greater is the discredit that you have incurred. All this then I will waive. [4] For an impartial investigation, men of Athens, would trace the source of Philip's greatness not to himself, but to this very platform. Of transactions, then, for which Philip should be grateful to those whose policy has served his interests, and for which you might well demand satisfaction, I do not find this the proper time for speaking. There are, however other topics open to me; you will be the better for having heard them, and if you will consent to scrutinize them accurately, men of Athens, you will find in them grave charges against Philip. On these topics I shall endeavor to address you. [5]

Now to call a man perjured and faithless, without drawing attention to his acts, might justly be termed mere abuse; but to describe his conduct in detail and convict him on the whole count fortunately requires only a short speech. Moreover, I have two reasons for thinking the story worth the telling: Philip shall appear as worthless as he really is, and those who stand aghast at his apparent invincibility shall see that he has exhausted all the arts of chicanery on which his greatness was founded at the first, and that his career has now reached its extreme limit. [6] For my own part, Athenians, I too should be inclined to regard Philip with mingled fear and admiration, if I saw that his success had crowned a career of integrity. But when I consider him attentively, I find that at the outset, when the Olynthians were anxious to consult you, but certain persons were for excluding them from our Assembly, he won our simple hearts by promising to hand over Amphipolis to us and by negotiating that secret treaty1 once so much talked about. [7] I find that next he won the friendship of the Olynthians by capturing Potidaea, which was yours, and thus wronging you, his former allies,2 in presenting it to them. Lastly he has won over the Thessalians by promising to bestow Magnesia upon them and by undertaking to conduct the Phocian war3 in their interests. In a word, he has hoodwinked everyone that has had any dealings with him; he has played upon the folly of each party in turn and exploited their ignorance of his own character. That is how he has gained his power. [8] Now even as he has raised himself by these arts, while every community imagined that they were to be the recipients of his favors, so by these same arts he is bound to be brought low again now that the utter selfishness of his conduct has been amply demonstrated. Yes, men of Athens, this is the turning point of Philip's career. If not, let someone step up and prove to me—or rather to you—that my words are untrue, or that those who have been once deceived will continue to trust him, or that the Thessalians who stooped to become his slaves would not now welcome their emancipation. [9]

Again, if anyone here admits the truth of this, but fancies that Philip will remain master of the situation, being already in possession of the fortresses and harbors and other points of vantage, he is mistaken. For when a league is knit together by goodwill, when all the allied states have the same interests, then the individual members are willing to remain steadfast, sharing the toil and enduring the hardships; but when a man has gained power, as Philip has, by rapacity and crime, then the first pretext, some trifling slip, overthrows and shatters all. [10] It is impossible, men of Athens, impossible to gain permanent power by injustice, perjury, and falsehood. Once in a way and for a brief season such things endure, and fed with hopes make, it may be, a brave show of blossom, but at the last they are detected and fall to pieces. For a house, I take it, or a ship or anything of that sort must have its chief strength in its substructure; and so too in affairs of state the principles and the foundations must be truth and justice. There is no vestige of these today in the power that Philip has built up. [11]

I urge you strongly to send help to Olynthus, and the best and quickest method that anyone can suggest will please me most. To the Thessalians you must send an embassy to inform some of them of our intentions and to stir up the others; for they have already decided to demand the restoration of Pagasae and to protest against the occupation of Magnesia. [12] But you must make sure, men of Athens, that our envoys do not confine themselves to words; they must be able to give some practical proof that we have taken the field in a way worthy of our city and that we are really grappling with the situation. All words, apart from action, seem vain and idle, especially words from Athenian lips; for the greater our reputation for a ready tongue, the greater the distrust it inspires in all men. [13] You must indeed prove the thoroughness of your reformation and the importance of your change of policy by raising money, by serving in the field, and by doing everything with a will, if you want anyone to take you seriously. If you consent to carry through the necessary reforms at once, not only will Philip's alliances, men of Athens, prove unstable and untrustworthy, but the weakness of his native power and sovereignty will be completely exposed. [14]

Yes, the power and sovereignty of Macedonia is indeed, as an adjunct, no slight contribution, as you found it when on your side against Olynthus in the days of Timotheus.4 On another occasion, in dealing with Potidaea, the Olynthians found its cooperation of some value; and lately it came to the help of the Thessalians in their factions and feuds against the ruling house. The accession, I suppose, even of a small force is in every way helpful; but by itself Macedonia is weak and full of defects. [15] For indeed Philip by all that might be deemed to constitute his greatness, by his wars and his campaigns, has only reduced his country below its natural level of insecurity. You must not imagine, men of Athens, that his subjects share his tastes. No: glory is his sole object and ambition; in action and in danger he has elected to suffer whatever may befall him putting before a life of safety the distinction of achieving what no other king of Macedonia ever achieved. [16] But his subjects have no share in the glory that results. They are perpetually buffeted and wearied and distressed by these expeditions north and south, never suffered to give their time to their business or their private affairs, never able to dispose of such produce as they can raise, because the war has closed all the markets in their land. [17] Hence it is not difficult to see how the majority of the Macedonians regard Philip. As for his household troops and footguards, they have indeed the name of admirable soldiers, well grounded in the science of war; but one who has lived on the spot, a man incapable of falsehood, has informed me that they are no better than other soldiers. [18] If there is anyone among them who can be described as experienced in war and battle, I was told that Philip from jealousy keeps all such in the background, because he wants to have the credit himself of every action, among his many faults being an insatiable ambition. Any fairly decent or honest man, who cannot stomach the licentiousness of his daily life, the drunkenness and the lewd dancing, is pushed aside as of no account. [19] All the rest about his court, he said, are robbers and toadies, men capable of getting drunk and performing such dances as I hesitate to name to you here. This report is obviously true, for the men who were unanimously expelled from Athens, as being of far looser morals than the average mountebank—I mean Callias the hangman and fellows of that stamp, low comedians, men who compose ribald songs to raise a laugh against their boon companions—these are the men he welcomes and loves to have about him. [20] These are perhaps trivial things, and yet, Athenians, to wise men they afford an important proof of the infatuation of his character. For the present, however, his prosperity throws all this into the shade （for success is apt to cover a multitude of faults）; but if he trips, then we shall know all about his vices. And it seems to me, Athenians, that we shall not have to wait long for the exposure, if heaven wills and you so resolve. [21] For just as in our bodies, so long as a man is in sound health, he is conscious of no pain, but if some malady assails him, every part is set a-working, be it rupture or sprain or any other local affection; even so is it with states and monarchies; as long as their wars are on foreign soil, few detect their weaknesses, but when the shock of battle is on their frontiers, it makes all their faults perfectly clear. [22]

But if any of you, Athenians, seeing Philip's good fortune, thinks that he is in that respect a formidable antagonist, he reasons like a prudent man. For fortune is indeed a great weight in the scales; I might almost say it is everything in human affairs. All the same, if you gave me the choice, I should prefer the fortune of Athens to Philip's, provided that you are willing to do your duty yourselves, even to a limited extent; for I am sure you have far greater claims than he upon the favor of the gods. Yet, I think, we sit here doing nothing. [23] But one who is himself idle cannot possibly call upon his friends, much less upon the gods, to work for him. No wonder that Philip, sharing himself in the toils of the campaign, present at every action, neglecting no chance and wasting no season, gets the better of us, while we procrastinate and pass resolutions and ask questions. I cannot wonder at this: the contrary would rather surprise me, that we, performing no single duty of a combatant, should overcome the man who fulfils them all. [24] Nay, I am surprised that you, men of Athens, who once withstood the Lacedaemonians in defence of the rights of Hellas, who spurned the opportunity, repeatedly offered, of self-aggrandizement, who lavished your treasure and jeoparded your lives in the field that others might enjoy their rights, now shrink from service and grudge to pay your contributions for the sake of your own possessions. I am surprised that you, who have so often saved the other states, both all of them together and each separately in turn, should sit down under the loss of what is your own. [25] All this I wonder at, and at another thing besides. I wonder that no one here, men of Athens, can count up how many years you have been at war with Philip, and what you have been doing all that long time. Surely you must know that all that time you have been hesitating, hoping that some other state would take action, accusing and sitting in judgement on one another, and still hoping, hoping—doing in fact pretty much what you are doing now. [26] And are you so unintelligent, men of Athens, as to hope that the same policy that has brought our state from success to failure will raise us from failure to success? Surely that is neither reasonable nor natural; for in all things it is much easier to keep than to gain. But, in the present instance, of what was once ours the war has left us nothing to keep and everything to gain. This, then, is our own task today. [27] I say it is your duty to serve cheerfully in person and to reserve your censures till you are masters of the situation. Then, judging all on their merits, assign praise to the deserving and punishment to the wrongdoers, and render excuse impossible by mending your own deficiencies; for you have no right to be severe critics of others' conduct, unless you first set your own house in order. [28] Why is it, think you, men of Athens, that all the generals you dispatch—if I am to tell you something of the truth about them—leave this war to itself and pursue little wars of their own? It is because in this war the prizes for which you contend are your own—（if, for instance, Amphipolis is captured, the immediate gain will be yours）—while the officers have all the dangers to themselves and no remuneration; but in the other case the risks are smaller and the prizes fall to the officers and the soldiers—Lampsacus, for example, and Sigeum, and the plunder of the merchant-ships. So they turn aside each to what pays him best. [29] But you, whenever you turn your attention to your reverses, sit in judgement on your officers, but acquit them whenever in defence they plead their necessities. Hence the outcome is strife and contention among yourselves, some taking this side and some that, while the interests of the state suffer. You conduct your party-politics, Athenians as you used to conduct your taxpaying—by syndicates.5 Each syndicate has an orator for chairman, with a general under him and three hundred to do the shouting. The rest of you are attached now to one party and now to another. [30] Surely this system must be abandoned. You must be once more your own masters, and must give to all alike the same chance to speak, to counsel, to act. But if you authorize one class of men to issue orders like absolute monarchs, and force another class to equip the galleys and pay the war-tax and serve in the field, while yet a third class has no other public duty than to vote the condemnation of the latter, you will never get anything essential done at the right time. There will always be some class with a grievance, who will fail you, and then it will be your privilege to punish them instead of the enemy. [31]

To sum up, I propose that all should contribute equitably, each according to his means, that all should serve in turn until all have taken part in the campaign, that all who wish to address you should have a fair hearing, and that you should adopt the best advice offered, not just what this man or that man is pleased to suggest. If you do this, you will be able to congratulate the speaker at once and yourselves later on, when you find the cause of the nation prospering.

1 The proposed surrender of Pydna in exchange for Amphipolis.

2 If the Greek is sound, this must allude to Philip's offer of alliance with Athens ten years before. But perhaps we should omit ὑμᾶς with Blass. The allies will then be the Potidaeans, as the Scholiast explains.

3 The Sacred War of 355-346.

4 In 364 an Athenian force under Timotheus joined Perdiccas, king of Macedonia, in an attack on the Olynthian confederacy.

5 Since the year 378 for the payment of the war-tax （ἐισφορά）, and since 357 for the trierarchy also, the citizens had been divided into a number of συμμορίαι, such that each comprised an equal fraction of the private wealth of the community. They were also divided into four classes according to property, the first class consisting of the wealthiest citizens, who prepaid the whole required sum into the exchequer and then recovered the money due from the less wealthy classes—a system which produced the abuses remedied by Demosthenes in 340. The richest man in a symmory was called the ἡγεμών or chairman and had under him an ἐπιμελητής or director. The comparison here is only a rough-and-ready one. Each political party in the Assembly has an orator （ἡγεμών） at its head, a favorite general （ἐπιμελητής） whose claims it supports, and a group of backers who applaud （=the 300 who pay）.

Very different, men of Athens, are the thoughts suggested to me by the contemplation of public affairs and by the speeches to which I listen. I observe that the speeches are all about punishing Philip, while our affairs have reached a stage at which it must be our first concern to avoid disaster ourselves. Hence these speakers seem to me to make precisely the mistake of submitting to you the wrong subject for deliberation. [2] But for myself I am perfectly well aware that Athens once had the chance both of establishing her power and of punishing Philip; for within my own memory and not long ago, both these objects were within our grasp. Now, however, I am persuaded that we must be content to secure the first, that of saving our allies. If once we can be sure of that, then we can go on to consider who is to be punished and how it is to be done; but until that foundation is well and truly laid, it is idle, in my opinion, to say a word about our ultimate object. [3]

Never was there a crisis that demanded more careful handling than the present. But the difficulty lies, I think, not in proposing a plan to meet the case: what puzzles me, men of Athens, is how to put it before you. For what I have seen and heard convinces me that most of your chances have escaped us rather from a disinclination to do our duty than from a failure to understand it. I must ask you to bear with me if I speak frankly, considering only whether I am speaking the truth, and speaking with the object that things may go better in the future; for you see how the popularity-hunting of some of our orators has led us into this desperate predicament. [4]

I must first refresh your memory with a little history. You remember, men of Athens, when news came three or four years ago that Philip was in Thrace besieging the fortress of Heraeum. Well, it was the month of Maemacterion, and there was a long and excited debate in the Assembly, and you finally decided to launch a fleet of forty vessels manned by citizens under the age of forty-five, and to raise forty talents by a special tax. [5] That year passed and Hecatombaeon came and Metageitnion and Boëdromion. In that month, with a great effort, after the celebration of the Mysteries1 you dispatched Charidemus with ten ships, unmanned, and a sum of five talents of silver. When news came that Philip was ill or dead—both reports reached us—you, Athenians, thinking that help was no longer needed, abandoned the expedition. But that was just your opportunity. If we had carried out our resolution in earnest and sailed to Thrace then, Philip would not have survived to trouble us today. [6]

Well, what is done cannot be undone; but now comes the opportunity of another war. That was why I have referred to the past, that you may not make the same mistake again. What use, men of Athens, are we to make of our opportunity? For if you do not send help “in full muster, whereto your power shall extend,”2 observe how all your generalship will make for Philip's success. [7] We could count3 on the Olynthians with their considerable resources; and the position of affairs was that Philip did not trust them, nor they Philip. We had negotiated a peace with them that hampered Philip sorely; for here was a powerful state, reconciled to us and watching for him to give them an opening. We thought that we ought by all means to embroil them with him; and what was then common talk has today somehow or other come to pass. [8] What remains then, men of Athens, but to help them with all your power and energy? I see no alternative. For, quite apart from the disgrace that we should incur if we shirk our responsibilities, I see not a little danger, men of Athens, for the future, if the Thebans maintain their present attitude towards us, and the Phocians have come to the end of their money, and there is nothing to hinder Philip, when he has crushed his present foe, from turning his arms against Attica. [9] But surely if anyone of you would postpone the necessary action till then, he must prefer to see danger at his very doors, rather than hear of it far away, and to beg help for himself, when he might be lending help to others now; for I suppose we all realize that that is what it will come to, if we throw away our present chances. [10]

Perhaps you will say, “Of course we all know that we must send an expedition, and we are willing to do so; but tell us how.” Then do not be surprised, Athenians, if my answer comes as a shock to most of you. Appoint a legislative commission. Do not use it to frame new laws—you have laws enough for your purpose—but repeal those which hamper us in the present crisis. [11] In plain language I mean the laws for administering the Theoric Fund, and also some of the service regulations. The former distribute the military funds as theatre-money among those who remain in the city; the latter give impunity to deserters and in consequence discourage those willing to serve. When you have repealed these laws and made the way safe for wise counsel, then look round for someone who will propose what you all know to be salutary measures. But until you have done this, do not expect to find a statesman who will propose measures for your benefit, only to be ruined by you for his pains. [12] You will never find one, especially as the only result would be that the proposer would get into trouble without improving the situation, and his fate would also make good advice more dangerous for the future. Yes, men of Athens, and you ought to insist that those who made these laws should also repeal them. [13] It is not fair that those legislators should enjoy a popularity which has cost the community dear, but that the patriotic reformer should be penalized by the odium of proposals by which we may all be benefited. Until you have set this right, Athenians, do not expect to find anyone so influential among you that he can break these laws with impunity, or so wanting in discretion as to run open-eyed into danger. [14]

At the same time, Athenians, you must not forget this, that a mere decree is worthless without a willingness on your part to put your resolutions into practice. If decrees could automatically compel you to do your duty, or could accomplish the objects for which they were proposed, you would not have passed such an array of them with little or no result, and Philip would not have had such a long career of insolent triumph. Long ago, if decrees counted for anything, he would have suffered for his sins. [15] But that is not so. For in order of time action is subsequent to speaking and voting, but in importance it comes first and ranks higher. It is action, then, that must be added: of all else we have enough. You have among you, Athenians, men competent to say the right thing, no nation is quicker-witted to grasp the meaning of speech, and you will at once be able to translate it into action, if only you do your duty. [16] Why, what better time or occasion could you find than the present, men of Athens? When will you do your duty, if not now? Has not your enemy already captured all our strongholds, and if he becomes master of Chalcidice, shall we not be overwhelmed with dishonor? Are not those states actually at war which we so readily engaged in that event to protect? Is not Philip our enemy? And in possession of our property? And a barbarian? Is any description too bad for him? [17] But, in the name of the gods, when we have abandoned all these places and almost helped Philip to gain them, shall we then ask who is to blame? For I am sure we shall never admit that it is ourselves. In the panic of battle the runaway never blames himself; it is always his general's fault, or his comrades', anyone's rather than his own. Yet surely to the runaways collectively the defeat is due; for he might have stood firm who now blames the others, and if every man had stood, the battle would have been won. [18] So now: someone's suggestion is not the best possible. Then let someone else get up and make a better, not blame the first speaker. Suppose the second suggestion is an improvement. Then act upon it, and success attend it! But, you say, it is not a pleasant one. The speaker is not to blame for that—unless he leaves out the necessary prayer!4 Yes, men of Athens, it is easy to pray, cramming all our wants into one short petition. But to choose, when choice of action is put before you, is no such child's-play, because you have to choose the best course rather than the pleasantest, if you cannot have both at once. [19] “But what if someone can leave our Theoric Fund untouched and name other sources for our military budget? Is not he the better statesman?” says someone. I grant you, men of Athens—if the thing is possible. But I wonder if any mortal, after spending all his existing wealth on superfluities, ever did or ever will find himself with a surplus for necessaries from his vanished funds. I think that in such proposals the wish is father to the thought, and that is why nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true. Unfortunately it is not often so in practical politics. [20] Now I want you, Athenians, to consider the possibilities of the case, and see how you can both serve and receive your pay. Surely it is not like men of sense and spirit to shirk your military duty because the pay is not forthcoming, thinking lightly of the shame of it all; or to snatch up arms and march against Corinth or Megara,5 but to let Philip enslave Greek cities, because you are short of rations for a campaign. [21]

I am not talking for the idle purpose of quarrelling with anyone here. I am not such a misguided fool as to pick a quarrel deliberately when I see no advantage from it. But I consider it right as a citizen to set the welfare of the state above the popularity of an orator. Indeed I am given to understand—and so perhaps are you—that the orators of past generations, always praised but not always imitated by those who address you, adopted this very standard and principle of statesmanship. I refer to the famous Aristides, to Nicias, to my own namesake,6 and to Pericles. [22] But ever since this breed of orators appeared who ply you with such questions as “What would you like? What shall I propose? How can I oblige you?” the interests of the state have been frittered away for a momentary popularity. The natural consequences follow, and the orators profit by your disgrace. [23] Yet reflect, men of Athens, on what might be named as the outstanding achievements of the days of your ancestors and those of your own time. I will give you a summary of familiar facts, for you need not go abroad for examples to teach you how to win success. [24] Now your ancestors, whom their orators, unlike ours today, did not caress or flatter, for five and forty years7 commanded the willing obedience of the Greeks; more than ten thousand talents did they accumulate in our Acropolis; the then king of Macedonia8 was their subject, even as a barbarian ought to be subject to Greeks; many honorable trophies for victory on sea and land did they erect, themselves serving in the field; and they alone of mankind left behind them by their deeds a renown greater than all detraction. [25] Such was their rank in the world of Hellas: what manner of men they were at home, in public or in private life, look round you and see. Out of the wealth of the state they set up for our delight so many fair buildings and things of beauty, temples and offerings to the gods, that we who come after must despair of ever surpassing them; yet in private they were so modest, so careful to obey the spirit of the constitution, [26] that the houses of their famous men, of Aristides or of Miltiades, as any of you can see that knows them, are not a whit more splendid than those of their neighbors. For selfish greed had no place in their statesmanship, but each thought it his duty to further the common weal. And so by their good faith towards their fellow Greeks, their piety towards the gods, and their equality among themselves, they deserved and won a great prosperity. [27]

Such was their condition in those days under the leaders I have named; and what is our condition today, thanks to our worthy statesmen? Is it the same or anything like the same? Why, we—I pass over much that I might mention, but you all see what a clear field we had got, with the Lacedaemonians crushed, the Thebans fully occupied, and no other city fit to dispute the supremacy with us, while we might have been both the vindicators of our own rights and the umpires of the rights of others; [28] and yet we have been robbed of our own soil, we have wasted on unnecessary objects more than fifteen hundred talents, our statesmen in peace have lost us the allies we gained in war, and we have provided a training-ground for this formidable rival. If not, let someone come forward and tell me who but ourselves has made Philip powerful. [29] “But,” says an objector, “if our foreign policy has failed, there is great improvement in domestic affairs.” And to what can you point in proof? To the walls we are whitewashing, the streets we are paving, the water-works, and the balderdash? Look rather at the men whose statesmanship has produced these results; some of them were poor and now are rich, some were obscure and now are eminent, some have reared private houses more stately than our public buildings, while the lower the fortunes of the city have sunk, the higher have their fortunes soared. [30]

What is the cause of all this, and why, pray, did everything go well then that now goes amiss? Because then the people, having the courage to act and to fight, controlled the politicians and were themselves the dispensers of all favors; the rest were well content to accept at the people's hand honor and authority and reward. [31] Now, on the contrary, the politicians hold the purse-strings and manage everything, while you, the people, robbed of nerve and sinew, stripped of wealth and of allies, have sunk to the level of lackeys and hangers-on, content if the politicians gratify you with a dole from the Theoric Fund or a procession at the Boëdromia, and your manliness reaches its climax when you add your thanks for what is your own. They have mewed you up in the city and entice you with these baits, that they may keep you tame and subservient to the whip. [32] You cannot, I suppose, have a proud and chivalrous spirit, if your conduct is mean and paltry; for whatever a man's actions are, such must be his spirit. By our Lady, I should not wonder if I got rougher treatment from you for pointing out these faults than the men who are responsible for them. For you do not allow liberty of speech on every subject, and indeed I am surprised that you have allowed it now. [33]

If, therefore, even at the eleventh hour, you can shake off these habits, and consent to fight and act as becomes Athenians and to devote the abundant resources that you have at home to the attainment of success abroad, perhaps, men of Athens, perhaps you may gain some important and unqualified advantage and may be quit of these paltry perquisites. Like the diet prescribed by doctors, which neither restores the strength of the patient nor allows him to succumb, so these doles that you are now distributing neither suffice to ensure your safety nor allow you to renounce them and try something else; they only confirm each citizen in his apathy. [34] You will ask me if I mean pay for military service. Not only that, men of Athens, but also the immediate adoption of a uniform system, so that each citizen, receiving his quota from the public funds, may fill his proper place in the service of the state. If peace can be preserved, he is better off at home, safe from temptations into which want might lead him. If some such contingency as the present arises, then it is better for him to serve his country in person, as indeed he ought, supported by these same contributions. If anyone is too old to fight, then as overseer or manager of some indispensable work, let him be paid on an equitable system the wages that he now receives without benefit to the state. [35] In a word, without increasing or lessening our expenditure by more than a trifle, I claim to have removed anomalies and introduced order into the state, establishing a uniform system of pay and of service, whether in the field or in the law-courts or wherever each man finds a task suited to his own age and to the needs of the occasion. Never have I suggested that we should give the worker's wages to the drone, or that we should ourselves remain inactive, idle, and helpless, and only learn by report that So-and-so's mercenaries have won a victory. For that is what happens now. [36] I am not indeed blaming the man who does your duty for you, but I call on you to do that for yourselves which you reward others for doing, and not to desert that post of honor, men of Athens, which your ancestors through many glorious hazards won and bequeathed to you.

I have now said almost all that I consider suitable. It is for you to choose what is likely to benefit the city and all of you.

1 The Eleusinian Mysteries, celebrated between the 13th and 24th of Boëdromion, i.e. about the beginning of October.

2 As Sandys has noted,the phrase is probably a formula borrowed from the actual text of the treaty.

3 The change to the past tense is made more abrupt by the omission of connecting particles in three successive sentences. Demosthenes is telling off on his fingers the advantages which the Athenians already had before the debate began.

4 The Athenians were too prone to rely on the efficacy of a prayer or pious wish, such as orators were fond of introducing into their speeches.

5 Generally explained of the attacks on Corinth in 458 and on Megara in 431 （Thuc. 1.105;Thuc. 2.31）; but probably the reference is to some later and obscurer events.

6 Demosthenes, the general, who perished with Nicias in the Sicilian expedition. He is not elsewhere described as an orator.

7 The interval between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars.

8 Perdiccas II.; a pardonable exaggeration.

If the question before us were a new one, men of Athens, I should have waited until most of the regular speakers had delivered their opinions, and if satisfied with any of their proposals, I should have remained silent, but if not satisfied, I should then have tried to express my own views. Since, however, it is our fortune to be still debating a point on which they have often spoken before, I can safely claim your indulgence if I am the first to rise and address you. For if in the past their advice had been sound, there would be no need for deliberation today. [2]

Now in the first place, Athenians, there is no need to despair of our present position, however hopeless it may seem. For that which is worst in the days that are past and gone is just what affords the best assurance for the future. And what is that? It is that your affairs are in this evil plight just because you, men of Athens, utterly fail to do your duty; since surely, were you so placed in spite of every effort on your part, it would be hopeless to look for improvement. [3] In the next place, bear this in mind. Some of you have been told, others know and remember, how formidable the Spartans were, not many years ago, and yet how at the call of honor and duty you played a part not unworthy of your country, and entered the lists against them in defence of your rights.1 I remind you of this, Athenians, because I want you to know and realize that, as no danger can assail you while you are on your guard, so if you are remiss no success can attend you. Learn a lesson from the former strength of the Lacedaemonians, which you mastered by strict attention to your affairs, and the present arrogance of our enemy, which discomposes us because we ignore every call of duty. [4] But if anyone here, Athenians, is inclined to think Philip too formidable, having regard to the extent of his existing resources and to our loss of all our strongholds, he is indeed right, yet he must reflect that we too, men of Athens, once held Pydna, Potidaea, and Methone and had in our own hands all the surrounding territory, and that many of the native tribes now in his service were then free and independent and were indeed more inclined to side with us than with Philip. [5] If, therefore, Philip had then come to the conclusion that it was a difficult task to fight the Athenians while they held such strong outposts in his own territory and he was destitute of allies, in that case he would never have gained his present successes, never acquired his present power. But, men of Athens, Philip saw clearly that all these outposts were but the open prizes of war, that by natural right the property of the absent belongs to those who are on the spot, and the property of the careless to those who can face toil and danger. [6] It was precisely by acting on this principle that he has mastered and now holds them all. Some he has seized by right of arms, others he has won by alliance and friendship. For indeed alliance and respect are willingly offered by all men to those whom they see ready and prompt to take action. [7] And you too, men of Athens, if you are willing to adopt this principle, now if never before, if each citizen is ready to throw off his diffidence and serve the state as he ought and as he best may, the rich man paying, the strong man fighting, if, briefly and plainly, you will consent to become your own masters, and if each man will cease to expect that, while he does nothing himself, his neighbor will do everything for him, then, God willing, you will recover your own, you will restore what has been frittered away, and you will turn the tables upon Philip. [8] Do not believe that his present power is fixed and unchangeable like that of a god. No, men of Athens; he is a mark for the hatred and fear and envy even of those who now seem devoted to him. One must assume that even his adherents are subject to the same passions as any other men. At present, however, all these feelings are repressed and have no outlet, thanks to your indolence and apathy, which I urge you to throw off at once. [9] For observe, Athenians, the height to which the fellow's insolence has soared; he leaves you no choice of action or inaction; he blusters and talks big, according to all accounts; he cannot rest content with what he has conquered; he is always taking in more, everywhere casting his net round us, while we sit idle and do nothing. [10] When, Athenians, will you take the necessary action? What are you waiting for? Until you are compelled, I presume. But what are we to think of what is happening now? For my own part I think that for a free people there can be no greater compulsion than shame for their position. Or tell me, are you content to run round and ask one another, “Is there any news today?” Could there be any news more startling than that a Macedonian is triumphing over Athenians and settling the destiny of Hellas? [11] “Is Philip dead?” you ask. “No, indeed; but he is ill.” And what is that to you? Even if something happens to him, you will soon raise up a second Philip, if that is the way you attend to your affairs; for even this Philip has not grown great through his own unaided strength so much as through our carelessness. [12] Nor is this all. If anything happened to him, or if Fortune, which always cares for us better than we care for ourselves, should bring that result about, remember that you must be on the spot if you want to take advantage of the general confusion and to control the situation at your pleasure; but in your present condition you would be unable, even if the opportunity offered, to take over Amphipolis, having neither a force nor a policy ready to hand.2 [13]

Well, assuming that you are thoroughly convinced that you must all be ready and willing to make this necessary effort, I say no more on that point. But as to the nature and size of the force which I think adequate to relieve the situation, the means of defraying the cost, and the best and speediest method of providing for its equipment, I shall now endeavor to state my views, making just this appeal to you, Athenians. [14] Wait till you have heard everything before you pass judgement. Do not be premature; and even if at the outset I seem to be suggesting a novel kind of expeditionary force, do not imagine that I am trying to postpone our operations. It is not those who cry “at once” or “today” that really speak to the purpose, for no dispatch of forces now could prevent what has already happened; [15] but it is the man who can indicate the nature, the size, and the source of the expedition that will be able to keep the field until we either defeat the enemy or consent to a termination of hostilities; for that is how we shall avoid trouble in the future. Now I believe that I can indicate this, without prejudice to anyone else's proposal. That is a bold promise, but it will soon be put to a practical test, and you shall be my judges. [16]

First then, men of Athens, I propose to equip fifty war-galleys; next you must make up your minds to embark and sail in them yourselves, if necessary. Further I recommend the provision of transports and other vessels, sufficient for the conveyance of half our cavalry. [17] All this is a necessary provision against Philip's sudden raids from Macedonia against Thermopylae, the Chersonese, Olynthus, or where he will. You must present to his mind the consideration that you may possibly shake off your excessive apathy and strike out as you did at Euboea, and before that, as we are told, at Haliartus, and quite recently at Thermopylae.3 [18] That, even if you should not act as I, personally, think you ought, is not an altogether trivial matter; for its purpose is that he may either hold his hand through fear, knowing that you are on the alert—he will know it sure enough, for there are some on our side, yes, too many, who report everything to him—or that he may overlook it and so be taken off his guard, provided there is nothing to hinder you from sailing against his country, if he gives you the chance. [19] Such, in my opinion, are the resolutions which you ought to adopt, and the force which must be equipped, at once. But in addition to this, Athenians, I propose that you should get ready a corps to carry on a continuous war of annoyance against Philip. Not an imposing army—on paper—of ten or twenty thousand mercenaries! It shall be a real Athenian contingent, and whether you appoint one general or more, whether it is this man or that or the other, him it shall strictly follow and obey. I also urge you to provide for its maintenance. [20] And what will this force be, and how large? How will it be maintained, and how far will it consent to effect its purpose? I will tell you, describing each detail separately. Of mercenaries I propose—and beware of the mistake that has so often thwarted your efforts. Thinking that the utmost is too little for the occasion, you choose the biggest scheme in your resolutions, but when it comes to performance, you fail to realize even the smallest. You should rather act and provide on a small scale, adding more if this proves insufficient. [21] So I propose that the whole force should consist of two thousand men, but of these five hundred must be Athenians, chosen from any suitable age and serving in relays for a specified period—not a long one, but just so long as seems advisable; the rest should be mercenaries. Attached to them will be two hundred cavalry, fifty at least of them being Athenians, serving on the same terms as the infantry. There will also be cavalry transports provided. [22] So far, so good; and what besides? Ten fast-sailing war-galleys. Since Philip has a fleet, we must have fast vessels if our force is to sail in safety. Now how is this army to be maintained? That also I will explain fully, when I have told you why I think so small a force sufficient, and why I insist that those serving shall be citizens. [23]

I name a force of this size, Athenians, because it is not in our power now to provide one fit to meet him in pitched battle: we must adopt guerilla tactics to start with. The force must therefore be neither unwieldy—for we cannot afford the pay and maintenance—nor altogether insignificant. [24] My reasons for insisting on the presence of citizens in the expedition are these. I am told that on a previous occasion the state maintained a mercenary force at Corinth,4 commanded by Polystratus, Iphicrates, Chabrias, and others, and that you citizens also served in person; and I know from history that you and these mercenaries, fighting shoulder to shoulder, beat the Lacedaemonians in the field. But ever since exclusively mercenary forces have been fighting for you, it is your friends and allies that they have beaten, while the power of your enemies has increased beyond bounds. They cast a casual glance at the war for which Athens has hired them, and off they sail to join Artabazus or anyone else, and the general naturally follows them, for he cannot command if he does not pay. [25] What then do I recommend? Deprive both general and men of all excuse by providing pay and by attaching to them citizen soldiers as overseers, so to speak, of their conduct in the field; for at present our system is a mockery. If anyone asked you, “Are you at peace, Athenians?” you would reply, “Certainly not; we are at war with Philip.” [26] But have you not been electing from among yourselves ten brigadiers and ten generals and ten squadron—leaders and a couple of cavalry-commanders? And what, pray, are those officers doing? With the exception of the solitary one whom you dispatch to the seat of war, they are all busy helping the state-sacrificers to marshal your processions. You are like the men who model the clay puppets;5 you choose your brigadiers and commanders for the market-place, not for the field. What! [27] Ought there not to be brigadiers and a cavalry-commander, all chosen from among yourselves, native Athenian officers, that the force might be a truly national one? Yes, but your own cavalry-commander has to sail to Lemnos,6 leaving Menelaus7 to command the men who are fighting for our city's possessions. I do not say this in his disparagement, but that commander, whoever he is, ought to be one elected by you. [28]

You think perhaps that this is a sound proposal, but you are chiefly anxious to hear what the cost will be and how it will be raised. I now proceed to deal with that point. As to the cost then: the maintenance, the bare rationing of this force, comes to rather more than ninety talents; for the ten fast galleys forty talents, or twenty minae a ship every month; for two thousand men the same amount, that each may receive ten drachmas a month ration-money; for the two hundred cavalry twelve talents, if each is to receive thirty drachmas a month.8 [29] If anyone imagines that ration-money for the men on active service is only a small provision to start with, he is wrong; for I feel quite sure that if no more than that is forthcoming, the force itself will provide the rest out of the war, so as to make up their pay without injury to any Greek or allied community. I am ready to embark as a volunteer and submit to any punishment, if this is not so. I will now tell you the sources from which the sums may be derived which I recommend you to provide.“Memorandum of Ways and Means” [30]

This is the scheme, Athenians, which my colleagues9 and I have been able to contrive. When you give your votes, you will pass these proposals, if you approve them, because your object is to fight Philip not only with decrees and dispatches, but with deeds also. [31]

But you would, I think, men of Athens, form a better idea of the war and of the total force required, if you considered the geography of the country you are attacking, and if you reflected that the winds and the seasons enable Philip to gain most of his successes by forestalling us. He waits for the Etesian winds10 or for the winter, and attacks at a time when we could not possibly reach the seat of war. [32] Bearing this in mind, we must rely not on occasional levies, or we shall be too late for everything, but on a regular standing army. You have the advantage of winter bases for your troops in Lemnos, Thasos, Sciathos, and the neighboring islands, where are to be found harbors, provisions, and everything that an army needs; and during that season of the year when it is easy to stand close in to shore and the winds are steady, your force will easily lie off his coast and at the mouth of his seaports. [33]

How and when this force is to be employed will be a matter for your duly appointed commander to determine according to circumstances, but what it is your task to provide, that I have put down in my resolution. If, men of Athens, you first provide the funds which I name and then equip the whole force complete, men, ships and cavalry, binding them legally to serve for the duration of the war, and if you make yourselves the stewards and administrators of the funds, looking to your general for an account of his operations, then you will no longer be for ever debating the same question and never making any progress. [34] More than that, Athenians, you will be depriving Philip of his principal source of revenue. And what is that? For the war against you he makes your allies pay by raiding their sea-borne commerce. Is there any further advantage? Yes, you will be out of reach of injury yourselves. Your past experience will not be repeated, when he threw a force into Lemnos and Imbros and carried your citizens away captive, when he seized the shipping at Geraestus and levied untold sums, or, to crown all, when he landed at Marathon and bore away from our land the sacred trireme,11 while you are still powerless to prevent these insults or to send your expeditions at the appointed times. [35] And yet, men of Athens, how do you account for the fact that the Panathenaic festival and the Dionysia are always held at the right date, whether experts or laymen are chosen by lot to manage them, that larger sums are lavished upon them than upon any one of your expeditions, that they are celebrated with bigger crowds and greater splendor than anything else of the kind in the world, whereas your expeditions invariably arrive too late, whether at Methone or at Pagasae or at Potidaea? [36] The explanation is that at the festivals everything is ordered by statute; every man among you knows long beforehand who of his tribe is to provide the chorus or who to equip the gymnasium,12 what he is to receive, when and from whom he is to receive it, and what he is to do; nothing here is left to chance, nothing is undetermined: but in what pertains to war and its equipment, everything is ill-arranged, ill-managed, ill-defined. Consequently we wait till we have heard some piece of news, and then we appoint our ship-masters, and arrange suits for exchange of property,13 and go into committee of ways and means, and next we resolve that the fleet shall be manned by resident aliens and freedmen, [37] then again by citizens, then by substitutes, then, while we thus delay, the object of our cruise is already lost. Thus the time for action is wasted in preparation, but the opportunities of fortune wait not for our dilatoriness and reluctance. The forces which we fancied would serve us as a stop-gap prove incapable when the crucial moment arrives. Meanwhile Philip has the effrontery to send such letters as these to the Euboeans.“Reading of the Letter” [38]

Most of what has been read, Athenians, is unfortunately true—possibly, however, not pleasant to listen to. But if all that a speaker passes over, to avoid giving offence, is passed over by the course of events also, then blandiloquence is justified; but if smooth words out of season prove a curse in practice, then it is our disgrace if we hoodwink ourselves, if we shelve whatever is irksome and so miss the time for action, [39] if we fail to learn the lesson that to manage a war properly you must not follow the trend of events but must forestall them, and that just as an army looks to its general for guidance, so statesmen must guide circumstances, if they are to carry out their policy and not be forced to follow at the heels of chance. [40] But you, Athenians, possessing unsurpassed resources—fleet, infantry, cavalry, revenues—have never to this very day employed them aright, and yet you carry on war with Philip exactly as a barbarian boxes. The barbarian, when struck, always clutches the place; hit him on the other side and there go his hands. He neither knows nor cares how to parry a blow or how to watch his adversary. [41] So you, if you hear of Philip in the Chersonese, vote an expedition there; if at Thermopylae, you vote one there; if somewhere else, you still keep pace with him to and fro. You take your marching orders from him; you have never framed any plan of campaign for yourselves, never foreseen any event, until you learn that something has happened or is happening. All this was once perhaps possible; now things have come to a crisis, so that it is no longer in your power. [42] It seems to me, Athenians, as if some god, out of very shame for the conduct of our city, had inspired Philip with this activity. For if he did nothing more, but were willing to rest satisfied with what he has already captured and subdued, I believe some of you would be quite content with what must bring the deepest disgrace upon us and brand us as a nation of cowards. But by always attempting something new, always grasping at more power, he may possibly rouse even you, if you have not utterly abandoned hope. [43] Personally I am surprised that none of you, Athenians, is distressed and angry to find that at the beginning of the war our aim was to punish Philip, but at the end it is to escape injury at his hands. But surely it is obvious that he will not stop, unless someone stops him. And is that what we are to wait for? Do you fancy that all is well, if you dispatch an unmanned fleet and the vague hope of some deliverer? [44] Shall we not man the fleet ourselves? Shall we not take the field with at least a proportion of native troops, even now, if never before? Shall we not sail against his territory? “Where then are we to go and anchor?” someone has asked. The progress of the war, men of Athens, will itself discover the weak places in his front, if we make the effort; but if we sit here at home listening to the abuse and mutual recriminations of the orators, there is not the slightest chance of our getting anything done that ought to be done. [45] Wherever, I believe, we send out a force composed partly or wholly of our citizens, there the gods are gracious and fortune fights on our side; but wherever you send out a general with an empty decree and the mere aspirations of this platform, your needs are not served, your enemies laugh you to scorn, your allies stand in mortal fear of such an expeditionary force. [46] It is impossible, utterly impossible for one man ever to do all that you want done; he can only promise14 and assent and throw the blame on someone else. In consequence our interests are ruined. For when your general leads wretched, ill-paid mercenaries, and finds plenty of men here to lie to you about what he has done, while you pass decrees at random on the strength of these reports, what are you to expect? [47]

How then is all this to be stopped? As soon as you, men of Athens, definitely appoint the same men as soldiers and as eye-witnesses of the campaign, and, on their return, as jurymen at the audit of your generals. In this way you will not merely learn about your affairs by hearsay, but you will be witnesses on the spot. So scandalous is our present system that every general is tried two or three times for his life in your courts, but not one of them dares to risk death in battle against the enemy; no, not once. They prefer the doom of a kidnapper or a pickpocket to a fitting death; for malefactors are condemned to the gallows, generals should die on the field of honor. [48] Some of us spread the rumor that Philip is negotiating with the Lacedaemonians for the overthrow of Thebes and the dissolution of the free states, others that he has sent an embassy to the Great King, others that he is besieging towns in Illyria; in short, each of us circulates his own piece of fiction. [49] Truly, men of Athens, I do think that Philip is drunk with the magnitude of his achievements and dreams of further triumphs, when, elated by his success, he finds that there is none to bar his way; but I cannot for a moment believe that he is deliberately acting in such a way that all the fools at Athens know what he is going to do next. For of all fools the rumor-mongers are the worst. [50] But if, putting rumors aside, we recognize that this man is our enemy, who has for years been robbing and insulting us, that wherever we once hoped to find help we have found hindrance, that the future lies in our own hands, and if we refuse to fight now in Thrace, we shall perhaps be forced to fight here at home—if, I say, we recognize these facts, then we shall have done with idle words and shall come to a right decision. Our business is not to speculate on what the future may bring forth, but to be certain that it will bring disaster, unless you face the facts and consent to do your duty. [51]

For my own part, I have never yet chosen to court your favor by saying anything that I was not quite convinced would be to your advantage; and today, keeping nothing back, I have given free utterance to my plain sentiments. Yet, certain as I am that it is to your interest to receive the best advice, I could have wished that I were equally certain that to offer such advice is also to the interest of the speaker; for then I should have felt much happier. But, as it is, in the uncertainty of what the result of my proposal may be for myself, yet in the conviction that it will be to your interest to adopt it, I have ventured to address you. Whatever shall be to the advantage of all, may that prevail!

1 The reference is probably to the invasion of Boeotia by Agesilaus in 378.

2 Lit. “being cut off [from Amphipolis] both in forces and in plans,” a vigorous but untranslatable phrase.

3 The Athenians sent a force to Euboea in 357 （cf. Dem. 1.8）. They helped the Thebans to defeat Lysander at Haliartus in Boeotia in 395. In 352, when Philip tried to march from Thessaly against Phocis, he was checked by the dispatch of an Athenian fleet to Thermopylae.

4 During the so-called “Corinthian War,” 394—387, when Iphicrates with a light-armed force destroyed a mora of Spartan hoplites. Chabrias, his successor, is best known for his defeat of the Lacedaemonian fleet at Naxos in 376. Of Polystratus, little or nothing is known.

5 Just as the terra-cotta figurines were manufactured not for practical use, but for the toy-market, so the generals were elected, not to fight, but to make a brave show in the public processions.

6 We learn from Aristot. Ath. Pol. 61.6, that a ἵππαρχος was regularly sent to Lemnos to take charge of the cavalry there.

7 Identified by Harpocration with a son of Amyntas II. and so half-brother of Philip; more probably a petty Macedonian chief who helped the Athenians at Potidaea in 364, and who is named in a complimentary inscription which has been preserved （C.I.A. 2.55）.

8 The proposed pay is 2 obols a day for infantry and marines, 1 drachma for cavalry. The crew of a trireme numbered 200. The daily pay would therefore be: Galleys: 2 ob. x 200 x 10 = 4000 ob. Infantry: 2 ob. x 2000 = 4000 ob. Cavalry: 6 ob. x 200 = 1200 ob. Total, 9200 obols or 15 1/3 minae a day; 460 minae or 7 2/3 talents a month; 92 talents a year. The hoplite normally received 2 obols for pay and the same for rations; the cavalry thrice this amount. Demosthenes' proposal amounts to this, that the pay should be halved and the men encouraged to make it up by looting. To appreciate these sums, it should he noted that an unskilled laborer at Athens received 3 or 4 obols a day.

9 On some financial board, or perhaps only members of the same political party. The suggestion of Dionysius that a new speech commences here has not found favor with the majority of editors.

10 Northerly winds which blew steadily down the Aegean in the autumn.

11 The “Paralus,” conveying the θεωρίαor state-embassy to Delos in May, touched at Marathon to offer sacrifice in the Δήλιον or sanctuary of Apollo. Readers of the Phaedo will remember why the execution of Socrates was postponed for thirty days.

12 A more important function of the gymnasiarch was to equip a team for the torch-race (λαμπαδηφορία).

13 If a citizen, nominated for a “liturgy,” thought that a richer member of his tribe, otherwise eligible, had been passed over, he could challenge him to undertake the burden or exchange properties. In the case of the trierarchy such a challenge was referred to the Strategi.

14 Editors detect a special allusion here. The “promises of Chares” had become proverbial.

I perceive, men of Athens, that the present outlook gives rise to much vexation and perplexity, because not only have we suffered serious losses, which cannot be mended by fine speeches, but there is also complete divergence of opinion about the preservation of what is left of our empire, one favoring this policy, another that. [2] While deliberation is naturally a vexatious and difficult task, you, Athenians, have enhanced its difficulties; for all other people deliberate before the event, but you after the event. And the result is that, as long as I can remember, the man who attacks any mistakes you have made gains your applause as an able speaker, but meanwhile the events and the real object of your deliberation wholly escape you. [3] Nevertheless, although this is so, I have come forward in the belief and confidence that, if you will consent to still the noise of faction and listen with the attention that befits men who are debating the most important interests of the state, I shall be able to offer you advice which will ameliorate our present condition and redeem our past losses [4]

While I am well aware, Athenians, that to talk in this assembly about oneself and one's own speeches is a very profitable practice, if one has the necessary effrontery, I feel that it is so vulgar and so offensive that, though I see the necessity, I shrink from it. I believe, however, that you will form a better judgement of what I am going to propose, if I remind you of a few things that I have said on former occasions. [5] For in the first place, Athenians, when it was proposed to take advantage of the unrest in Euboea1 and side with Plutarchus in a war that would bring us more expense than glory, I was the first and indeed the only speaker to oppose it, and I narrowly escaped being torn to pieces by those who induced you for trifling gains to commit many serious errors. It was not long before you incurred disgrace and suffered indignities2 such as no men have ever received from those whom they have helped, and so you realized the baseness of those to whom you then gave ear and the wisdom of the advice you received from me. [6] Again, men of Athens, when I saw that Neoptolemus, the actor, enjoying safe conduct under cover of his profession, was doing his best to injure our city and was Philip's agent and representative at Athens, I once more came forward and addressed you, not out of private animosity or love of informing, as indeed my subsequent conduct has proved. [7] And I shall not in this case, as in the former one, find fault with those who spoke in defence of Neoptolemus, for not a man defended him, but with yourselves. For if it had been a tragedy in the theater of Dionysus that you were watching and not a debate on the very existence of your state, you could not have shown more partiality to him and more ill-will against me. [8] Yet I suppose that by this time you have all observed that after visiting the enemy, in order, as he alleged, to collect sums owing to him there which he might spend on public services here, and after making copious use of the argument that it was too bad to arraign men who were transferring wealth from Macedonia to Athens, he secured a safe conduct owing to the peace, converted into cash all the real property that he held here, and has absconded to Philip. [9] There, then, you have two of my warnings, bearing testimony to the value of my earlier speeches, and uttered by me honestly and in strict conformity with the facts. Thirdly, men of Athens—and when I have given just this one further instance, I will at once pass on to some topics that I have omitted—when we ambassadors returned from administering the oaths for the peace, [10] at that time there were some who assured us that Thespiae and Plataea would be rebuilt, that Philip, if he gained the mastery, would protect the Phocians and break up Thebes into villages, and that you would retain Oropus and receive Euboea in exchange for Amphipolis. Led on by these false hopes and cajoleries, you abandoned the Phocians against your own interests and against justice and honor. But you will find that I neither took part in this deception, nor passed it over in silence, but spoke out boldly, as I am sure you remember, saying that I had neither knowledge nor expectation of such results and that all such talk was nonsense. [11]

Now all these instances, where I appear to have had a clearer foresight than the rest, I shall not refer to a single cause, men of Athens—my real or pretended cleverness3; nor will I claim that my knowledge and discernment were due to anything else than two things, which I will mention. One, men of Athens, was good luck, which my experience tells me is worth all the cleverness and wisdom in the world. [12] The second is this: on public questions my estimates and decisions are disinterested, and no one can show that my policy and my speeches have been in any way bound up with my private gain. Hence I always see accurately the advantageous course as suggested by actual circumstances. But the instant you throw money into one scale, its weight bears down the judgement with it; and for him that has once done this, accurate and sound calculation becomes utterly impossible. [13]

Now there is one precaution which I think essential. If anyone proposes to negotiate for our city an alliance or a joint contribution4 or anything of the sort, it must be done without detriment to the existing peace. I do not mean that the peace is a glorious one or even creditable to you, but, whatever we may think of it, it would better suit our purpose never to have made it than to violate it when made, because we have now sacrificed many advantages which would have made war safer and easier for us then than now. [14] The second precaution, men of Athens, is to avoid giving the self-styled Amphictyons now assembled any call or excuse for a crusade against us. For if we should hereafter come to blows with Philip, about Amphipolis or in any private quarrel not shared by the Thessalians or the Argives or the Thebans, I do not believe for a moment that any of the latter would be dragged into the war, least of all— [15] hear me before you shout me down—least of all the Thebans. I do not mean that they regard us with favor or that they would not readily oblige Philip, but they do realize quite clearly, for all the stolidity that people attribute to them, that if they ever fight you, they will have to take all the hard knocks themselves, and someone else will sit quietly by, waiting for the spoils. Therefore they would never make such a sacrifice unless the war had a common cause and origin. [16] If we went to war again with the Thebans about Oropus5 or for some other private reason, I do not think we should suffer, for both their allies and ours would, of course, offer support, if their own territory were invaded, but would not join either side in aggression. That is the way with every alliance worth considering, and such is the natural result. [17] No individual ally is so fond either of us or of the Thebans as to regard our security and our supremacy in the same light. Secure they would all have us, for their own sakes; that either nation should gain supremacy and be their master would suit none of them. What, then, is the danger that I think we must guard against? Lest the inevitable war should afford all states a common pretext and a common ground of complaint. [18] For if the Argives and Messenians and Megalopolitans, and other Peloponnesians who side with them, quarrel with us because of our embassy to Sparta and because they think that we have some interest in Lacedaemonian policy; and if the Thebans are, as people admit, hostile and likely to be even more so, because we offer an asylum to their exiles and make no disguise of our hostility to them in every way; [19] and if the Thessalians dislike us because we protect the Phocian fugitives, and Philip because we are trying to exclude him from the Amphictyonic Council; then I am afraid that these separate powers, having each a private grudge, may make common cause against us on the strength of the Amphictyonic decrees, and may then be tempted to go beyond what their several interests require, as they were in the case of the Phocians. [20] For of course you realize that in the present case the Thebans and Philip and the Thessalians have acted in complete unison, though with widely different aims. The Thebans, for instance, were powerless to prevent Philip from pressing on and seizing the passes, or from coming in at the finish and usurping the credit of their previous exertions. [21] Hence today the Thebans have been partially successful in recovering territory, but have failed lamentably to win honor and glory; for they would presumably have gained nothing if Philip had not passed Thermopylae. That was not what they wanted, but they put up with it all because they had the will, though not the power, to grasp Orchomenus and Coronea. [22] Now some people actually go so far as to say that Philip was compelled, against his real wishes, to hand over Orchomenus and Coronea to the Thebans. For my part I wish them joy of their opinion. I only know this, that Philip was less interested in those towns than desirous to secure the pass, to win for himself the credit of finishing off the Sacred War, and to preside at the Pythian games. That was the summit of his ambition. [23] But the Thessalians aimed at the aggrandizement neither of Thebes nor of Philip, because they felt that all that would tell against them; but they were anxious to control the council at Thermopylae and the Delphian temple6—two clear gains for them; and it was this ambition that led them to join in the war. So you will find that each of these powers was induced for private reasons to do much that it did not wish. That, however, is emphatically what we must avoid. [24]

“Must we then,” you ask, “do as we are told for fear of the consequences? Do you of all men advise that?” Far from it. No, I think we ought so to act as to do nothing unworthy of Athens and yet avoid war; we ought to show to all men our good sense and the justice of our claims. To those who think we ought boldly to risk everything, and who do not foresee the inevitable hostilities, I suggest the following consideration. We are allowing the Thebans to keep Oropus; and if anyone should ask us to tell him candidly why we do so, we should have to answer, “In order to avoid war.” [25] In the same way by agreement with Philip we have waived our claim to Amphipolis, and we are permitting Cardia7 to be excepted from the rest of the Chersonese, the Carian8 to occupy the islands of Chios, Cos, and Rhodes, and the Byzantines to detain our ships9 in harbor, obviously because we think that the respite which the peace affords is more productive of advantages than wrangling and coming to blows over these points. Therefore it is sheer folly and perversity, after dealing with the powers one by one on matters of vital concern to ourselves, to challenge them all together to fight about this phantom at Delphi.

1 Through Philip's intrigues a Macedonian party had been formed in the cities of Euboea. Plutarchus, the ruler of Eretria, applied to Athens for help against a rising. The request was supported by Eubulus and Midias, but opposed by Demosthenes. A force was sent under the command of Phocion and won a battle, but Plutarchus proved himself a traitor and was expelled from Eretria.

2 According to the Scholiast, Plutarchus seized some of the Athenian troops and compelled Athens to ransom them for 50 talents.

3 The Greek here is difficult. Most edd. awkwardly render ἀλαζονεία“[cause for] boasting”: it is rather political quackery passing muster for real statesmanship.

4 A euphemism under the second Athenian confederacy for the tribute （φόρος） of the first.

5 Oropus was in Attica, close to the Boeotian frontier. A war for its possession would therefore be confined to the Thebans and the Athenians, and Demosthenes has no fear of the result.

6 The Amphictyonic Council met in autumn at the temple of Demeter near Thermopylae, and at Delphi in spring.

7 Cardia, largely inhabited by Athenian colonists, was included in the peace of 346 as an ally of Philip.

8 Idrieus, satrap of Caria, brother and successor of the famous Mausolus, who had helped the islands in their revolt from Athens in the Social War of 357—355.

9 Corn—ships from the Euxine forced to pay toll at Byzantium.

Whenever, men of Athens, we are discussing Philip's intrigues and his violations of the peace, I observe that all the speeches on our side are manifestly inspired by justice and generosity, and those who denounce Philip are all felt to be saying exactly the right thing; but of the much needed action, which alone would make the speeches worth hearing, little or nothing ensues. [2] Unfortunately all our national affairs have now reached to such a pass, that the more completely and manifestly Philip is convicted of violating the peace with us and of plotting against the whole of Greece, the more difficult it is to suggest the right course of action. [3] The reason, Athenians, is this. Though all who aim at their own aggrandizement must be checked, not by speeches, but by practical measures, yet, in the first place, we who come before you shrink from any definite proposal or advice, being reluctant to incur your displeasure; we prefer to dilate on Philip's shocking behavior and the like topics; and, secondly, you who sit here are indeed better equipped than Philip for making speeches about justice and for appreciating them in the mouth of another, but, when it comes to hindering the accomplishment of his present plans, you remain utterly inactive. [4] The result is, I suppose, inevitable and perhaps reasonable. Where either side devotes its time and energy, there it succeeds the better—Philip in action, but you in argument. So if you still think it enough to employ the sounder arguments, that is easy; your task entails no trouble. [5] But if you have to devise means whereby our present fortunes shall be repaired, and their further decline shall not take us completely by surprise, and we shall not be confronted by a mighty power which we shall be unable even to withstand, then our method of deliberation must be changed, and all who speak and all who listen must choose the best and safest policy instead of the easiest and most agreeable. [6]

In the first place, Athenians, if anyone views with confidence the present power of Philip and the extent of his dominions, if anyone imagines that all this imports no danger to our city and that you are not the object of his preparations, I must express my astonishment, and beg you all alike to listen to a brief statement of the considerations that have led me to form the opposite conclusion and to regard Philip as our enemy. Then, if you think me the better prophet, adopt my advice; if you prefer those who have so confidently trusted him, give them your allegiance. [7] Now I, men of Athens, reason thus. What did Philip first get under his control after the Peace? Thermopylae and the Phocian government. Well, what did he make of these? He chose to act in the interests of Thebes, not of Athens. And why so? Because, I believe, guided in his calculations by ambition and the desire of universal dominion, regardless of the claims of peace and quietness and justice, [8] he rightly saw that to our city and our national character he could offer nothing, he could do nothing, that would tempt you from selfish motives to sacrifice to him any of the other Greek states, but that you, reverencing justice, shrinking from the discredit involved in such transactions, and exercising due and proper forethought, would resist any such attempt on his part as stoutly as if you were actually at war with him. [9] But as to the Thebans, he believed—and the event justified him—that in return for benefits received they would give him a free hand for the future and, so far from opposing or thwarting him, would even join forces with him, if he so ordered. Today, on the same assumption, he is doing the Messenians and the Argives a good turn. That, men of Athens, is the highest compliment he could pay you. [10] For by these very acts you stand judged the one and only power in the world incapable of abandoning the common rights of the Greeks at any price, incapable of bartering your devotion to their cause for any favor or any profit. And it was natural that he should form this opinion of you and the contrary opinion of the Argives and Thebans, because he not merely looks to the present, but also draws a lesson from the past. [11] For I suppose he learns from history and from report that your ancestors, when they might, at the price of submission to the Great King, have become the paramount power in Greece, not only refused to entertain that proposal, conveyed to them by Alexander, an ancestor of Philip's line, but chose to quit their homes and endure every hardship, and thereafter wrought those deeds which all men are always eager to relate, though no one has ever been able to tell them worthily; and therefore I shall not be wrong in passing them over, for they are indeed great beyond any man's power of speech. On the other hand, he learns that the ancestors of these Thebans and Argives either fought for the barbarians or did not fight against them. [12] He knows, then, that they both will pursue their private interests, irrespective of the common advantage of the Greeks. So he thought that if he chose you, he would be choosing friends, and that your friendship would be based on justice; but that if he attached himself to the others, he would find in them the tools of his own ambition. That is why, now as then, he chooses them rather than you. For surely it is not that he regards their fleets as superior to ours, nor that, having discovered some inland empire, he has abandoned the seaboard with its harbors, nor yet that he has a short memory for the speeches and the promises that gained for him the Peace.1 [13]

But it may be urged, by someone who claims to know all about it, that he acted on that occasion, not from ambition or from any of those motives with which I find fault, but because the claims of the Thebans were more just than ours. Now that is precisely the one argument that he cannot use now. What! The man who orders the Lacedaemonians to give up their claims to Messene, how could he pretend that he handed over Orchomenus and Coronea to Thebes because he thought it an act of justice? [14]

“But,” it will be urged （for there is this excuse left）, “he was forced to yield against his better judgement, finding himself hemmed in between the Thessalian cavalry and the Theban heavy infantry.” Good! So they say he is waiting to regard the Thebans with suspicion, and some circulate a rumor that he will fortify Elatea.2 [15] That is just what he is “waiting” to do, and will go on “waiting,” in my opinion. But he is not “waiting” to help the Messenians and Argives against the Lacedaemonians: he is actually dispatching mercenaries and forwarding supplies, and he is expected in person with a large force. What! The Lacedaemonians, the surviving enemies of Thebes, he is engaged in destroying; the Phocians, whom he has himself already destroyed, he is now engaged in preserving! And who is prepared to believe that? [16] For my part I do not believe that Philip, if he acted in the first place reluctantly and under compulsion, or if he were now inclined to throw the Thebans over, would be persistently opposing their enemies. But if we may judge from his present conduct, it is plain that on that occasion also he acted from deliberate choice, and everything, if correctly observed, points to the fact that all his intrigues are directed against Athens. [17] And today at any rate this policy is in a measure forced upon him. For observe! He wants to rule, and he has made up his mind that you, and you only, are his rivals. He has long injured you; of nothing is he more conscious than of that. For it is by holding the cities which are really yours that he retains safe possession of all the rest, and he feels that if he gave up Amphipolis and Potidaea, his own country would not be safe for him. [18] He knows, then, these two facts—that he is intriguing against you and that you are aware of it. Assuming that you are intelligent, he thinks you are bound to hate him, and he is on the alert, expecting some blow to fall, if you can seize an opportunity and if he cannot get in his blow first. [19] That is why he is wide awake and ready to strike, and why he is courting certain people to the detriment of our city—Thebans, I mean, and those Peloponnesians who share their views. He imagines that their cupidity will lead them to accept the present situation, while their natural dullness will prevent them from foreseeing anything that may follow. Yet men of even moderate intelligence might perceive some clear indications, which I had occasion to point out to the Messenians and the Argives, and which may perhaps with advantage be repeated to you. [20]

“Can you not imagine,” I said, addressing the Messenians, “how annoyed the Olynthians would have been to hear a word said against Philip in the days when he was handing over to them Anthemus, to which all the former kings of Macedonia laid claim, when he was making them a present of Potidaea, expelling the Athenian settlers, and when he had taken upon himself the responsibility of a quarrel with us and had given them the territory of Potidaea for their own use? Do you imagine they expected to be treated as they have been, or would have believed anyone who suggested it? [21] Nevertheless,” said I, “after a brief enjoyment of other men's territory, they have long been robbed by Philip of their own, expelled with contumely, not merely vanquished but betrayed, bought and sold by their own country-men. For truly such close communications with tyranny corrupt good constitutions. [22] And what of the Thessalians? Do you imagine,” I said, “that when he was expelling their despots, or again when he was presenting them with Nicaea and Magnesia, they ever dreamed that a Council of Ten3 would be established among them, as it is today, or that the same man who restored to them the Amphictyonic meeting at Thermopylae would also appropriate their own peculiar revenues? Impossible! But so it came to pass, as all men may know. [23] You,” I said, “gaze with wonder at Philip as he gives away this and promises that, but if you are truly wise, pray that you may never find that he has deceived and cozened you. Verily,” I said, “there are manifold means devised by states for protection and safety—stockades, ramparts, fosses and the like. [24] And all these are wrought by hand and entail expense. But there is one common bulwark which the instinct of sensible men possesses within itself, a good and safe one for all, but invaluable for democracies against tyrants. And what is that bulwark? It is mistrust. Guard that; hold fast to that. If you preserve it, no harm can touch you. [25] What is your object?” I said. “Freedom. Then do you not see that Philip's very titles are utterly irreconcilable with that? For every king, every despot is the sworn foe of freedom and of law. Beware,” said I, “lest, seeking to be rid of war, you find a master.” [26]

That is what I said to them, and they shouted their approval; and they heard many other speeches from the envoys, both in my presence and again later, as it seems; but they are none the more likely to do without Philip's friendship and Philip's promises. [27] And, indeed, it is not strange that Messenians and other Peloponnesians should sometimes act against their better judgement; but you, who know, both from your own intelligence and from our speeches, how you are compassed about with plots and snares, you will, as it seems to me, find to your surprise that through having done nothing in time, you have submitted to everything. So much does the pleasure and ease of the moment prevail over that which at some future time is likely to be advantageous. [28]

On your practical measures you will, if you are wise, deliberate hereafter by yourselves4; at present I will suggest the immediate answer which it would be proper for you to adopt.“Answer”

It would indeed have been fair, men of Athens, to call upon those who conveyed to you Philip's promises,5 on the strength of which you were induced to conclude the Peace. [29] For I should never myself have consented to serve on the embassy, nor would you, I am sure, have suspended military operations, if you had imagined that Philip after securing peace would act as he has done; but his words at the time were very different from his present actions. Yes, and there are others who ought to be called upon. Whom do I mean? The men who, when peace was made and when I, returning from the second embassy—that sent to administer the oaths—found that the state was being imposed upon, and spoke out and protested and refused to give up Thermopylae and the Phocians— [30] the men,6 I say, who told you that I, being a water-drinker, was naturally a disagreeable, cross-grained fellow, and that Philip, if he got through the Pass, would do just what you would pray for, would fortify Thespiae and Plataea, and humble the Theban pride, and dig a trench across the Chersonese7 at his own charges, and restore to you Euboea and Oropus in lieu of Amphipolis. All this was said from this very platform, as I am sure you recollect, although you are not remarkable for keeping in mind those who injure you. [31] And the crowning disgrace is that your posterity also is bound by the same peace which these hopes prompted you to conclude; so completely were you led astray. Why do I mention this now and assert that these men ought to be called upon? I vow that I will boldly tell you the whole truth and keep nothing back. [32] It is not that by descending to abuse I may lay myself open to retaliation in your presence,8 while I give those who from the first have fallen foul of me an excuse for making further profit out of Philip. Nor do I wish to indulge in idle talk. But I think that one day Philip's policy will cause you more distress than it does now, [33] for I see the plot thickening. I hope I may prove a false prophet, but I fear the catastrophe is even now only too near. So when you can no longer shut your eyes to what is happening, when you do not need me or someone else to tell you, but can all see for yourselves and be quite certain that all this is directed against you, then I expect you will be angry and exasperated. [34] Yes, I am afraid that, since the ambassadors have kept silence about the services for which they know they have been bribed, those who are trying to repair some of the losses that these men have caused may chance to fall under your displeasure; for I observe that people vent their wrath as a rule, not on those who are to blame, but chiefly on those who are within their reach. [35] Now therefore, while the danger is in the future and is gathering head, while we can still hear one another speak, I want to remind each one of you, however clearly he knows it, who it is that persuaded you to abandon the Phocians and Thermopylae, the command of which gave Philip the command also of the road to Attica and the Peloponnesus, and who it is that has forced you to take counsel, not for your rights and interests abroad, but for your possessions here at home and for the war in Attica, a war which will bring distress on every one of us, when it does come, but which really dates from that very day. [36] For if you had not been hoodwinked then, there would be no anxiety in Athens, because Philip could never, of course, have gained command of the sea and reached Attica with his fleet, nor could he have marched past Thermopylae and Phocis, but either he would have acted fairly and observed the Peace by keeping quiet, or he would have been instantly engaged in a war similar to that which made him so anxious for the Peace. [37]

Enough has now been said by way of reminder. May all the gods forbid that my warnings should ever be brought to the sternest test! For I would not willingly see one man suffer, even though he deserve to perish, if his punishment involves the danger and the damage of all.

1 Had Philip renounced his hope of founding a maritime and commercial state and confined himself to extending his empire north and west of Macedonia, his rejection of Athenian friendship would be intelligible. As it is, it must be otherwise explained.

2 To rebuild the walls of Elatea, destroyed in 346, would be a check to the Thebans, as barring their way to Phocis. Philip's occupation of Elatea in 339 is the theme of the well-known passage in Dem. 18.169 ff. Demosthenes is playing on the two meanings of μέλλει, “he is likely to” and “he is delaying to.”

3 According to Dem. 9.26 Philip set up >tetrarchies in Thessaly. The two accounts may be reconciled by assuming that he retained the old fourfold division of the country, but set up an oligarchy of ten in each division. Philip, whose policy was to divide and conquer, would be unlikely to centralize the government. It is just possible that δεκαδαρχίαν may be a mistaken amplification of Δ᾽αρχίαν=τετραρχίαν, but in that case the singular would be strange. Owing to the decarchies which Lysander imposed on so many free cities at the end of the Peloponnesian war, the number ten would have the same sinister associations in Greece as it had at Rome and at Venice.

4 i.e. when the foreign envoys have withdrawn. At this point, if not at the end of the speech, the proposed answer was read. This is not indicated in the MSS.

5 The audience might fairly call upon men like Aristodemus, Ctesiphon, and Neoptolemus （Dem. 19.13, Dem. 19.315） to explain how they came to make themselves responsible for these promises, to which Philip had not actually committed himself.

6 Aeschines and, in particular, Philocrates （Dem. 19.46）.

7 To protect the Greek cities from the raids of the Thracians.

8 The Greek is difficult, and editors are of many minds. The usual meaning of λόγον ποιεῖν, “to grant a hearing,” seems impossible here. Perhaps the literal meaning is “cause speech against myself in your presence on equal terms,” i.e. give my enemies an opening to reply in the same style, which, Demosthenes hints, would be an insult to his audience.

Men of Athens, the charges that Philip brings against the speakers who here uphold your claims shall never deter us from offering our advice on what concerns your interests; for it would be monstrous if the freedom of utterance which is the privilege of this platform should be stifled by dispatches from him. But for myself, men of Athens, I wish first to touch upon the different points of his letter, and then to add my comments on the speeches of his ambassadors. [2]

Philip begins by saying that he offers you Halonnesus as his own property, but that you have no right to demand it of him, because it was not yours when he took it, and is not yours now that he holds it. Moreover, when we ambassadors visited him, he used similar language, to the effect that he had captured the island from pirates and that therefore it belonged absolutely to him. [3] It is not difficult to refute this claim on the ground of its unfairness. For all pirates seize places belonging to others and turn them into strongholds from which to harry their neighbors. But a man who should defeat and punish pirates would surely be unreasonable, if he said that the stolen property wrongfully held by them passed thereby into his own possession. [4] For, that plea once granted, if some pirates seize a strip of Attic territory, or a part of Lemnos or Imbros or Scyros, and if someone dislodges these pirates, what is to prevent this place, where the pirates are established and which is really ours, from becoming the property of those who chastised them? [5] Philip is quite aware that his claim is unjust, but, though he knows this as well as anyone, he thinks that you may be hoodwinked by the men who have engaged, and are now fulfilling their engagement, to direct Athenian policy in accordance with his own desires. Nor again does he fail to see that in either case, however you dub the transaction, the island will be yours, whether it is presented or restored to you. [6] Then what does he gain by using the wrong term and making a present of it to you, instead of using the right term and restoring it? It is not that he wants to debit you with a benefaction received, for such a benefaction would be a farce; but that he wants all Greece to take notice that the Athenians are content to receive maritime strongholds from the man of Macedon. And that is just what you, men of Athens, must not do. [7]

But when he says that he is willing to arbitrate, he is merely mocking you. In the first place, he expects Athenians to refer to arbitration, as against this upstart from Pella, the question whether the islands are yours or his. If you cannot preserve your maritime possessions by your might that once saved Hellas, but rely on any jury to whom you refer it, and whose verdict is final, to preserve them for you, provided always that Philip does not buy their votes, [8] is it not an open confession, when you adopt this policy, that you have abandoned everything on the mainland, and are you not advertising to the world that there is not a single thing for the sake of which you will appeal to arms, if indeed for your possessions on the sea, where you say your strength lies, you shall appeal, not to arms, but to the law-courts? [9]

Then again he says that he has sent envoys to arrange with you an inter-state legal compact, and that this compact will be valid, not as soon as it is ratified by the body of Athenian jurors, as the law directs, but only after it has been referred to him, thus constituting himself a court of appeal from your decision.1 His object, of course, is to steal a march on you, and to insert in the compact an admission on your part that none of the wrongs committed at Potidaea are charged against him by you as the injured party, but that you confirm his seizure and retention of that city as lawful. [10] Yet Athenians, settled at Potidaea, were robbed of their property by Philip, though they were not at war but in alliance with him, and though he had duly pledged his word to all the inhabitants of that city. Of course he wants to get his many illegal acts everywhere confirmed by a declaration on your part that you bring no charge against him and do not consider yourselves wronged; [11] for that Macedonians need no inter-state compact with Athenians let past history be your witness, since neither Amyntas, the father of Philip, nor the earlier kings ever made any such compact with our city, [12] though intercourse between the two nations was more frequent then than now. For Macedonia was under our sway and tributary to us,2 and we used each other's markets more freely then than at present, and mercantile suits3 were not then, as now, settled strictly every month, making a formal compact between such distant parties unnecessary. [13] However, there was no such compact, and it would not have paid to make one which would entail a voyage from Macedonia to Athens or from Athens to Macedonia in order to obtain satisfaction. Instead, we sought redress in Macedonia under their laws and they at Athens under ours. So do not forget that the real object of this proposed compact is to get your admission that you have no reasonable claim to Potidaea. [14]

As for the pirates, he says that it is only fair that we should join him in clearing the sea of these depredators, who injure you as much as himself; which amounts to a claim that you should set him up as a maritime power and confess that without Philip's help you cannot keep the high seas safe, [15] and furthermore that he should have a free hand to cruise about and anchor off the different islands and, under pretence of protecting them from pirates, bribe the islanders to revolt from you. Not content with getting your commanders to carry refugees from Macedonia to Thasos, he claims the right to appropriate the other islands also, and sends agents to accompany your commanders, as if to share with you the task of policing the seas. [16] And yet some people say that he has no use for the sea! Why, this man who has no use for the sea is laying down war-ships and building docks, and is ready to send out fleets and incur considerable expense in facing risks at sea, and all for objects that he does not value! [17]

Men of Athens, do you suppose that Philip would insist on your making such concessions to him, if he did not despise you and put complete confidence in his friends here, whom he has made it his policy to conciliate? They are not ashamed to devote their lives to Philip rather than to their own country, and they think that when they take his gifts they are taking them home—though they are selling everything at home. [18]

With regard to the amendment of the peace, Philip's ambassadors conceded to us the right to amend it, and our amendment, universally admitted to be fair, was that each side should retain its own possessions. But he now contends that he never agreed to this, and that his ambassadors never even raised the point. This simply means that his friends here have persuaded him that you have no memory for what has been stated publicly in the Assembly. [19] But that is just the one thing that you cannot have forgotten; for at the same meeting of the Assembly Philip's ambassadors put his case before you and the decree was duly proposed, so that, as the decree was recited immediately after the conclusion of the speeches, it was impossible for you to pass at once a resolution which gives the lie to the ambassadors. So it is not against me but against you that his letter is aimed, alleging that you have sent back to him your decision on questions that were never put before you. [20] Why, the ambassadors themselves, whom your resolution flatly contradicted, when you read them your answer and offered them hospitality, did not venture to come forward and say, “You misrepresent us, men of Athens; you say we have said something that we never did say.” No; they held their tongues and took their leave. But I want, men of Athens—for Pytho, who was one of the ambassadors, made an excellent impression on you by his address—I want to recall to you the exact words he used, for I am sure you must remember them. [21] His language was pretty much that of Philip's present letter. For while accusing those of us who misrepresent Philip, he at the same time blamed you because, though Philip is eager to benefit you and prefers your friendship to that of any other state, you constantly thwart him, lending an ear to false accusers, who both beg money of him and slander him; for tales of that sort, when he is told that he was traduced and that you believed what was said, make him change his mind, since he finds himself distrusted by the very people whom it has been his aim to benefit. [22] Pytho therefore urged public speakers not to attack the peace, because it was not good policy to rescind it, but to amend any unsatisfactory clause, on the understanding that Philip was prepared to fall in with your suggestions. If, however, the speakers confined themselves to abusing Philip without drafting any proposals which, while preserving the terms of peace, might clear Philip of suspicion, he asked you to pay no attention to such fellows. [23] And you approved these arguments and said that Pytho was right, as indeed he was. He made these statements, however, not in order that all those advantages that Philip had paid so much money to secure might be struck out of the treaty, but because he had been so instructed by his schoolmasters here in Athens, who did not imagine that anyone would propose to annul the decree of Philocrates, which lost us Amphipolis. [24]

As for me, men of Athens, I did not venture to propose anything that was unconstitutional, but it was not so to propose the direct contrary of Philocrates' decree, as I can prove to you. For the decree of Philocrates, through which you lost Amphipolis, was itself contrary to the earlier decrees by which you claimed possession of that territory. [25] So it was this decree of Philocrates that was unconstitutional, nor would it have been possible to draft a constitutional proposal in conformity with his unconstitutional decree. By drafting mine to agree with the earlier decrees, which were constitutional and which also kept your territory intact, I both kept within the constitution and was able to convict Philip of trying to deceive you and of wishing, not to amend the peace, but to bring discredit on those who were pleading your cause. [26] You are all aware that, after conceding the right to amend the peace, he now denies it. He says that Amphipolis is his, because your decree that he should keep what he held confirmed his right. It is true that you passed that decree, but you never admitted his right to Amphipolis, for it is possible to “hold” what belongs to another, and it is not all “holders” who hold what is their own, but many are in possession of what is really another's. So his clever quibble is merely foolish. [27] Moreover he remembers the decree of Philocrates, but he has quite forgotten the letter sent to you when he was besieging Amphipolis, in which he admitted that Amphipolis was yours; for he said that when he had taken it he would “restore” it to you, implying that it was your property, and not that of the holders. [28] Apparently those who inhabited Amphipolis, before Philip took it, were holding Athenian territory; but when he has taken it, it is no longer our territory, but his own, that he holds; and in the same way at Olynthus and Apollonia and Pallene he is in possession of his own property, not that of others. [29] Do you not see that his letter to you is all carefully calculated, so that his words and his actions may appear to conform to the universal standard of justice, while he has really shown supreme contempt for it in claiming for himself and denying to you territory which is yours by common consent and decree of the Greeks and of the King of Persia?4 [30]

As for the other amendment which you propose to introduce, that all the Greeks who are not parties to the peace should remain free and independent, and that if they are attacked, the signatories should unite to defend them, [31] you considered it both fair and generous that the peace should not be confined to Athens and her allies on the one side and Philip and his allies on the other, while those who are allies of neither are exposed to ruin at the hands of their stronger neighbors, but rather that your peace should extend its protection to them also, and that we should disarm and observe a real peace. [32] But Philip, although, as you have heard from his letter, he admits the justice of this amendment and consents to accept it, has robbed the Pheraeans of their city, placing a garrison in their citadel, in order, I suppose, to ensure their independence; he is even now engaged in an expedition against Ambracia, and as for the three Elean colonies in Cassopia5—Pandosia, Bucheta, and Elatea—he has wasted their land with fire, stormed their cities, and handed them over to be the slaves of his own kinsman, Alexander. How zealous he is for the freedom and independence of the Greeks, you may judge from his acts. [33]

With regard to his repeated promises to you of substantial benefits, he complains that I am slandering and defaming him in the ears of the Greeks, for he says that he has never made you any promises at all. Such is the shamelessness of the man who stated in his letter, which is still to be seen in the Council House, that if peace was made he would confer such benefits on you as would stop the mouths of us, his opponents, benefits which he said he would put down in writing, if he were sure that the peace would be made. The inference was that all the good things that we were to enjoy on the conclusion of peace were ready for immediate delivery. [34] Peace has been concluded, but all the good things that we were to enjoy are still to seek, and upon the Greeks has come such ruin as you well know. Yet he promises in the present letter that if you will only trust his friends and advocates and will punish the wicked men who traduce him to you, he will confer substantial benefits. His benefits, however, will amount to this: [35] he will not restore your possessions, for he claims them as his own, and his rewards will not be delivered in this part of the world, for fear his motive should be misrepresented to the Greeks6; some other country, it seems, some new quarter will be assigned for the bestowal of your rewards. [36]

As for the places held by you which he took in time of peace, violating the terms and breaking his engagements, since he has not a word to say but is clearly convicted of injustice, he expresses his willingness to refer the question to a fair and impartial court. But this is the only question that needs no such reference; the calendar is sufficient to decide it. [37] For we all know in what month and on what day the peace was made, and as surely also do we know in what month and on what day Fort Serreum and Ergisce and the Sacred Mount7 were captured. Surely these things were not done in a corner; they need no judicial inquiry; everyone can find out which came first, the month in which the peace was made or that in which the places were taken. [38]

Again, he says that he has restored all the prisoners that were taken in the war. Yet the man of Carystus,8 the agent of our city, for whose recovery you sent three embassies—Philip was so anxious to oblige you that he killed him and did not even allow you to recover his corpse for burial. [39]

With regard to the Chersonese, it is important to examine the terms of his dispatch to you and also to know what he is actually doing in the matter. For the whole of the land north of Agora, as being his own property and no concern of yours, he has handed over as a private estate to Apollonides of Cardia. Yet the boundary of the Chersonese is not Agora, but the altar of Zeus of the Marches, half way between Pteleum and the White Strand, [40] where there was going to be a canal across the peninsula. This is proved by the inscription on the altar of Zeus, which runs thus:

  “ The dwellers here have set this boundary-stone
  Midway `twixt Pteleum and the Silver Strand,
  And raised this altar fair, that men may own
  That Zeus is Warden of our No Mans Land.9
  ”
  Unknown

[41]

This district, however, of whose extent most of you are aware, he treats as his own, enjoying part himself and bestowing part on others, and so he brings all your property under his own control. Not only does he appropriate the land north of Agora, but he also orders you in his present letter to settle by arbitration any disputes you have with the Cardians to the south of Agora—the Cardians, who are settlers in your own territory! [42] They have a dispute with you; see whether it is about a trifle. They say that the land they live in is not yours, but their own, and that while your possessions there are held by grace in a foreign country, theirs are their own property on their own soil, and that this is admitted in a decree of your countryman, Callippus of the Paeanian deme. [43] And there they speak truth, for he did propose such a decree, and when I indicted him for a breach of the constitution, you acquitted him; that is how he has brought your claim into dispute. But if and when you submit your dispute with the Cardians to arbitration, to decide whether the land is yours or theirs, why not extend the principle to the other states of the Chersonese also? [44] Philip's insolence is carried so far that he says that if the Cardians decline arbitration, he will be responsible for coercing them; as if you could not compel Cardians to do anything you wanted! He will make them do it, he says, since you cannot. Are not his favors to you great and manifest? [45] And this letter was actually commended by some Athenians, who merit your hatred much more than Philip. For whatever Philip does to thwart you, he is only aiming at advantage and glory for himself, but Athenians who make a parade of their goodwill to Philip, rather than to their own country, are wretches who deserve to perish at your hands unpitied, if you carry your brains in your heads and not trodden down in your heels.10 [46]

It now remains for me, in answer to this precious letter and to the speeches of the ambassadors, to propose the resolution which I conceive to be in accordance with justice and your interests.

1 Agreements between two Greek states, laying down the conditions under which their nationals might mutually obtain legal redress, were calledσύμβολα. The cases were tried in the courts of the defendant's state. The terms of the compact with Macedonia were to be ratified by the heliastic court of Athens, but Philip claimed the right of final ratification. Others explain it to mean that Philip demanded that the verdicts of the Athenian juries in cases under this pact （δίκαι ἀπὸ συμβόλων） should be confirmed by him.

2 The speaker is improving on the claim made by Demosthenes in Dem. 3.24. Macedonia was never really subject or tributary to Athens.

3 Also calledἔμμηνοι δίκαι, because they had to be settled within a month. They were heard, under the presidency of the Thesmothetae, during the six winter months, when the seas were closed to commerce.

4 This refers to the amended rescript obtained by the Athenians from the king in 366. See Dem. 19.137.

5 A district of Epirus, just north of the Ambracian Gulf.

6 As if unduly favoring the Athenians.

7 Three small places on the Thracian Coast of the Aegean, taken by Philip from Cersobleptes, after the Athenians had accepted the peace of Philocrates （346）, but before Philip had taken the oath.

8 A town in the south of Euboea.

9 If the reading is correct,ἀμμοπίηwill be the marches, which belong to no one and are therefore put under the protection of Zeus. Blass readsμοίρης σημέϊον ἀμμορίης τε᾽which leaves the last line rather in the air.

10 Libanius finds in this ugly metaphor an indication of the spuriousness of this speech. “Longinus” also condemns it （Long. De Subl. 38）, but we cannot say to whom he attributed it, as his text here is mutilated.

It should be the duty of all speakers, men of Athens, to give no expression to their hatred or their partiality, but to put forward just what each thinks the best counsel, especially when you are debating a question of urgent public importance. But since there are speakers who are impelled to address you, either as partisans or from some other motive, whatever it may be, you citizens who form the majority ought to dismiss all else from your minds, and vote and act in such a way as you think will best serve our city. [2] The really serious problem is the state of the Chersonese and Philip's Thracian campaign, now in its eleventh month; yet most of the speeches have been confined to what Diopithes is doing or what he is going to do. For my part, when charges are brought against any of those whom you can legally punish whenever you like, I hold that it is open to you either to deal with their case at once or to postpone it; and it is quite unnecessary for me or anyone else to take a strong line on the subject of such charges. [3] But when our national enemy, with a strong force, is trying to forestall us in the neighborhood of the Hellespont, and when, if we are once too late, we shall never again be able to save the situation, then I think it is to our interest to complete our plans and preparations as quickly as we can, and not be diverted from our purpose by clamorous accusations about extraneous matters. [4]

I often wonder at the sort of speeches that are delivered here, but nothing, men of Athens, has surprised me more than what I heard uttered in the Council the other day, that your advisers are bound to put before you the plain alternative of fighting or observing the peace. [5] But the fact is, if Philip keeps quiet and does not retain any of our territory contrary to the terms of peace, and does not form a general coalition against us, there is nothing more to be said and we must simply observe the peace, and I perceive a readiness to do so on your part at any rate; but if the oath that we took and the terms on which we made peace are published for all men to read, [6] and if it is proved that from the first, even before Diopithes set sail with colonists, whom they now accuse of having started hostilities, Philip has unfairly taken much that is ours, about which your decrees denouncing him still stand good, and that he is all the time repeatedly seizing the property of the other Greeks and of the barbarians, and so equipping himself for an attack upon us, what do they mean by saying that we must either make war or keep peace? [7] For we have no choice in the matter, but there remains the most righteous and most necessary task of all, which these gentlemen deliberately pass over in silence. What then is that task? To defend ourselves against the aggressor. Or perhaps they mean that if Philip keeps his hands off Attica and the Piraeus, he is neither injuring our city nor provoking hostilities. [8] But if they ground their plea upon this principle, if this is their interpretation of the peace, it is obvious to all that their argument is assuredly impious and intolerable and dangerous to Athens; and it follows besides that their own words flatly contradict their indictment of Diopithes. For why on earth are we to give Philip leave to do everything else, provided he keeps clear of Attica, while Diopithes is not allowed to help the Thracians, or else we shall have to admit that he is starting a war? [9] Yes, you may say, as to that indeed the speakers are proved wrong, but the mercenaries are really acting abominably in ravaging the shores of the Hellespont, and Diopithes is wrong in detaining the merchantmen, and we must not sanction it. Very well; be it so. I have no objection. [10] Only I think that, if their advice is really given in perfect good faith, even as they are trying to break up the force belonging to our city by bringing charges before you against the commander, who provides for its maintenance, so they are bound to show that Philip's force will also be disbanded, if you accept their advice. If not, you must observe that they are merely reducing our city to the same plight that has already caused her to forfeit all her existing advantages. [11] For I need not tell you that Philip owes his successes to nothing in the world more than to his being the first in the field. For the man who always keeps a standing army by him, and who knows beforehand what he wants to do, is ready in an instant for anyone that he chooses to attack, while it is only after we have heard of something happening that we begin to bustle about and make our preparations. [12] Hence, I believe, it results that Philip, quite at his leisure, keeps whatever he assails, while we are too late, and whatever we have spent has been lavished in vain; we have succeeded in showing our enmity and our will to thwart him, but by being too late for action we only incur additional ignominy. [13]

Do not, therefore, fail to observe, Athenians, that at present all else is mere talk and pretence; the real object of this scheming and contriving is that you should stay at home, with no Athenian force in field, while Philip, without the least trouble, settles everything to suit his wishes. For you must first note what is going on at the present moment. [14] He is now established in Thrace with a large force, and is sending for considerable reinforcements from Macedonia and Thessaly, according to the statements of those on the spot. Now, if he waits for the Etesian winds to blow and marches to the siege of Byzantium, do you think that the Byzantines will remain in their present state of infatuation and will not call upon you and demand your help? [15] I think not. Nay, even if there are others whom they distrust more than us, I think they will rather admit such within their walls than surrender their city to Philip—if indeed he does not forestall them by capturing it. Therefore, if we cannot sail from Athens, and if there is no force ready to help them on the spot, their doom is sealed. [16] “Because,” you say, “the wretched creatures are infatuated and stupid beyond measure.” Quite so, but still we are bound to preserve them in the interests of Athens. And then again we are not certain of another thing, that he will not attack the Chersonese. Indeed, if we may judge from the letter which he sent you, he means to take vengeance on the settlers there. [17] If, therefore, our present force is still in being, it will be able both to save the Chersonese and to make raids upon Philip's territory. But if it is once disbanded, what shall we do if he marches against the Chersonese? “Bring Diopithes to trial,” you say. And how will that help matters? “Well, then, we will set out from Athens ourselves.” But suppose the winds will not let us? “But surely Philip will not attack.” And who will go bail for that? Do you not observe and consider, men of Athens, [18] what season1 of the year is upon us—the season at which certain people think it their duty to keep the Hellespont clear of you and hand it over to Philip? What if he quits Thrace and never approaches the Chersonese or Byzantium—for you must take that also into your reckoning—but turns up at Chalcis and Megara, just as he did at Oreus not long ago? Will it be better to make our stand here and let the war spread to Attica, or to contrive some employment for him away yonder? I prefer the latter. [19]

Therefore, knowing and weighing these facts, it is the duty of all of you, not surely to try to disparage and break up the force that Diopithes is doing his best to provide for the state, but to provide an additional force yourselves and to keep him well supplied with funds and in every way to give him your loyal co-operation. [20] For suppose someone should ask Philip, “Tell me, which would you prefer? That the troops now serving with Diopithes, whatever their character may be”—for I am not discussing that—“should prosper and win credit at Athens and grow in numbers with the co-operation of the government, or that a few accusers and detractors should cause them to be broken up and destroyed?” I think he would choose the latter. And what Philip would pray the gods to vouchsafe him, are some of us here trying to compass? And do you still ask how our interests are sacrificed everywhere? [21]

I want therefore to examine frankly the present state of our affairs, and to find out what we are doing ourselves now and how we are dealing with the situation. We refuse to pay war-taxes or to serve in person; we cannot keep our hands off the public funds; we will not pay Diopithes the allowances agreed upon, nor sanction the sums that he raises for himself; [22] but we grumble and criticize his methods, and ask what he intends to do, and all that sort of thing; and yet, while maintaining that attitude, we refuse to perform our own tasks; with our lips we praise those whose speeches are worthy of our city, but our actions serve only to encourage their opponents. [23] Now, you have a habit of asking a speaker on every occasion, “What then must be done?”; but I prefer to ask you, “What then must be said?” Because, if you are not going to pay your contributions, nor serve in person, nor keep your hands off the public funds, nor grant Diopithes his allowances, nor sanction the sums that he raises for himself, nor consent to perform your own tasks, I have nothing to say. You who have gone so far in granting license to those whose object is fault-finding and calumny, that even about what they say he is going to do, even on that ground they accuse him in advance and you listen to them—what can anyone say? [24]

Now, some of you ought to be told the possible result of all this. I shall speak freely, for indeed I could not speak otherwise. All the generals that have ever set sail from your land—if I am wrong, I submit myself to any penalty—raise money from the Chians, from the Erythraeans, from whatever people they can, I mean of the Greeks of Asia Minor. [25] Generals with only one or two ships raise less; those with a larger fleet raise more. Also those who pay do not pay the sum, be it large or small, for nothing; they are not such madmen. No, they purchase for the merchants sailing from their own harbors immunity from injury or robbery, or a safe conduct for their own ships, or something of that sort. They say that they are granting “benevolences.” That is the name for these exactions. [26] And so too in this case, while Diopithes has a force with him, it is perfectly plain that all these people will pay up. For where else do you suppose that he looks for the maintenance of his troops, if he gets nothing from you and has no private fortune to furnish their pay? To the sky? No, indeed; it is from what he can collect or beg or borrow that he keeps things going. [27] So those who denounce him to you are simply warning everybody not to grant him a penny, because he will be punished for what he intends to do, apart from what he has done or what he has acquired for himself. That is what they mean when they cry, “He intends to besiege the towns! He is betraying the Greeks!” Do any of these gentlemen really care about the Asiatic Greeks?—and yet they would, I expect, be better champions of other countries than of their own. [28] That, too, is the meaning of the dispatch of a second general to the Hellespont. For if Diopithes is acting outrageously in detaining the merchantmen, a note, men of Athens, a brief note, could put a stop to all this at once; and there are the laws, which direct us to impeach such offenders, but not, of course, to mount guard over ourselves,2 at such a cost and with so large a fleet; for that would be the height of madness. [29] No, against our enemies, who are not amenable to the laws, it is right and necessary to maintain troops, to send out fleets, and to raise funds; but against ourselves we have these resources, a decree, an impeachment, and a dispatch-boat. Those are what right-minded citizens would employ; malignants, bent on the ruin of the State, would do as these men are doing. [30] And that there are some men of this type among you, though bad enough, is not the real evil; but you who sit here are by now in such a mood that if anyone comes forward and asserts that the cause of all our evil is Diopithes or Chares or Aristophon, or any other citizen that he happens to name, you at once agree and applaud the truth of the remark. [31] But if anyone rises and tells you the real truth and says, “Nonsense, Athenians! The cause of all these evils and all these troubles is Philip, for if he had kept quiet, our city would have been free from trouble,” you cannot gainsay it, but you seem to me to be vexed and to feel that you are, as it were, losing something. [32] But as to the reason for this—and in Heaven's name, when I am pleading for your best interests, allow me to speak freely—some of our politicians have been training you to be threatening and intractable in the meetings of the Assembly, but in preparing for war, careless and contemptible. If, then, the culprit named is someone on whom you know you can lay hands in Athens, you agree and assent; but if it is someone whom you cannot chastise unless you overcome him by force of arms, you find yourselves helpless, I suppose, and to be proved so causes you annoyance. [33] For it ought to have been the reverse, men of Athens; all your politicians should have trained you to be gentle and humane in the Assembly, for there you are dealing with rights that concern yourselves and your allies, but in preparing for war they should have made you threatening and intractable, because there you are pitted against your enemies and rivals. [34] As it is, by persuasive arts and caresses they have brought you to such a frame of mind that in your assemblies you are elated by their flattery and have no ear but for compliments, while in your policy and your practice you are at this moment running the gravest risks. For tell me, in Heaven's name, if the Greeks should call you to account for the opportunities that your carelessness has already thrown away, and should question you thus: [35] “Men of Athens, do you send us embassies on every occasion to explain how Philip is plotting against us and all the other Greeks, and how we must be on our guard against that man, and all that sort of thing?”—（we are bound to admit it and plead guilty, for that is just what we do）—“And yet, you most futile of mortals, when that man has been out of sight3 for ten months, cut off from all chance of returning home by disease, by winter, and by war, [36] have you neither liberated Euboea nor regained any of your lost possessions? On the other hand, while you stay at home, at leisure and in health”—（if indeed they could say that men who behave thus are in health）—“Philip has set up two despots in Euboea, entrenching one right over against Attica and the other as a menace to Sciathus; [37] but you—have you never cleared away these obstacles, even if you had no further ambitions, and have you tamely submitted? Undoubtedly you have stood aside from his path and made it abundantly clear that, were he to die ten times over, you at least will make no further move. Then why do you pester us with your embassies and your complaints?” If these are their words, what are we to say, Athenians? How are we to answer? For my part, I cannot tell. [38]

Now there are some who think they confute a speaker the moment they ask, “What then ought we to do?” To these I will give the fairest and truest answer: not what you are doing now. I will not, however, shrink from going carefully into details; only they must be as willing to act as they are eager to question. [39] First, men of Athens, you must fix this firmly in your minds, that Philip is at war with us and has broken the peace. Yes, let there be no more wrangling over that question. He is ill-disposed and hostile to the whole city and to the very soil on which the city stands, [40] and, I will add, to every man in the city, even to those who imagine that they stand highest in his good graces. If they doubt it, let them look at Euthycrates and Lasthenes, the Olynthians, who thought they were such bosom-friends of his, and then, when they had betrayed their city, met the most ignominious fate of all. The chief object, however, of his arms and his diplomacy is our free constitution; on nothing in the world is he more bent than on its destruction. [41] And it is in a way natural that he should act thus. For he knows for certain that even if he masters all else, his power will be precarious as long as you remain a democracy; but if ever he meets with one of the many mischances to which mankind is liable, all the forces that are now under restraint will be attracted to your side. [42] For nature has not equipped you to seek aggrandizement and secure empire, but you are clever at thwarting another's designs and wresting from him his gains, and quick to confound the plots of the ambitious and to vindicate the freedom of all mankind. Therefore he does not want to have the Athenian tradition of liberty watching to seize every chance against himself. Far from it! Nor is his reasoning here either faulty or idle. [43] This, then, is the first thing needful, to recognize in Philip the inveterate enemy of constitutional government and democracy, for unless you are heartily persuaded of this, you will not consent to take your politics seriously. Your second need is to convince yourselves that all his activity and all his organization is preparing the way for an attack on our city, and that where any resistance is offered to him, that resistance is our gain. [44] For no man is so simple as to believe that though Philip covets these wretched objects in Thrace—for what else can one call Drongilus and Cabyle and Mastira and the other places that he is now occupying and equipping?—and though he endures toil and winter storms and deadly peril for the privilege of taking them, [45] yet he does not covet the Athenian harbors and dockyards and war-galleys and silver mines and the like sources of wealth, but will allow you to retain them, while he winters in that purgatory for the sake of the rye and millet of the Thracian store-pits. It is not so, but it is to win these prizes that he devotes his activities to all those other objects. [46] What, then, is the task of sound patriots? To know and realize all this, to shake off our outrageous and incurable slothfulness, to contribute funds, to call upon our allies, and to provide and arrange for the permanent upkeep of our existing army, so that just as Philip has a force ready to attack and enslave all the Greek states, so you may have one ready to protect and assist them all. [47] For if you trust to mere expeditions, you can never gain any of your essential objects. You must first levy a force and provide for its maintenance, and appoint paymasters and clerks, and arrange that there shall be the strictest watch kept over your expenditure, and afterwards you must demand from your paymasters an account of their moneys, and from the general an account of his campaign. If you do this, and if you are really in earnest about it, you will either compel Philip to keep the peace fairly and to abide within his own frontiers—and that would be the greatest blessing of all—or you will fight him on equal terms. [48]

But if anyone thinks that all this means great expense and much toil and worry, he is quite correct, but if he reckons up what will hereafter be the result to Athens if she refuses to act, he will conclude that it is to our interest to perform our duty willingly. [49] For if you have the guarantee of some god, since no mere mortal could be a satisfactory surety for such an event that if you remain inactive and abandon everything, Philip will not in the end march against yourselves, by Zeus and all the other gods, it would be disgraceful and unworthy of you and of the resources of your city and the record of your ancestors to abandon all the other Greeks to enslavement for the sake of your own ease, and I for one would rather die than be guilty of proposing such a policy. All the same, if someone else proposes it and wins your assent, so be it: offer no resistance, sacrifice everything. [50] But if no one approves of this, and if on the contrary we all of us foresee that the more we allow him to extend his power, the stronger and more formidable we shall find him in war, what escape is open to us, or why do we delay? When, men of Athens, shall we consent to do our duty? “Whenever it is necessary,” you will say. [51] But what any free man would call necessity is not merely present now, but is long ago past, and from the necessity that constrains a slave we must surely pray to be delivered. Do you ask the difference? The strongest necessity that a free man feels is shame for his own position, and I know not if we could name a stronger; but for a slave necessity means stripes and bodily outrage, unfit to name here, from which Heaven defend us! [52]

Therefore, although I would gladly touch on all the other topics and explain the way in which certain politicians are working your ruin, I will confine myself to pointing out that whenever any question arises that concerns Philip, instantly up jumps someone and tells you how good a thing it is to preserve peace, and what a bother it is to keep up a large army, and how certain persons want to plunder your wealth, and all that sort of thing; and by these speeches they put you off and afford leisure for Philip to do whatever he wishes. [53] But the result of this is for you indeed repose and idleness, for the present—blessings which I am afraid you will one day consider dearly purchased—but for the speakers the popularity and the payment. But in my view it is not to you that they should recommend peace, for you have taken the advice and there you sit: it is to the man who is even now on the war-path. [54] For if Philip can be won over, your share of the compact is ready to hand. Again, they should reflect that the irksome thing is not the expense of securing our safety, but the doom that will be ours if we shrink from that expense. As for the “plunder of your wealth, ”they ought to prevent that by proposing some way of checking it and not by abandoning your interests. [55] And yet, men of Athens, it is just this that rouses my indignation, that some of you should be distressed at the prospect of the plunder of your wealth, when you are quite competent to protect it and to punish any offender, but that you are not distressed at the sight of Philip thus plundering every Greek state in turn, the more so as he is plundering them to injure you. [56]

What then is the reason, men of Athens, why these speakers never admit that Philip is provoking war, when he is thus openly conducting campaigns, violating rights, and subduing cities, but when others urge you not to give way to Philip nor submit to these losses, they accuse them of trying to provoke war? I will explain. [57] It is because they want the natural anger that you would feel at any sufferings in the war to be diverted against your wisest counsellors, so that you may bring them to trial instead of punishing Philip, and that they may themselves be the accusers instead of paying the penalty for their present wrong-doings. That is the meaning of their suggestion that there is a party among you that desires war, and that that is the question you now have to decide.4 [58] But I am absolutely certain that, without waiting for any Athenian to propose a declaration of war, Philip is in possession of much of our territory and has just dispatched a force against Cardia. If, however, we like to pretend that he is not at war with us, he would be the greatest fool alive if he tried to disprove that. [59] But when our turn comes, what shall we say then? For of course he will deny that he is attacking us, just as he denied that he was attacking the men of Oreus, when his troops were already in their territory, or the Pheraeans before that, when he was actually assaulting their walls, or the Olynthians at the start, until he was inside their frontiers with his army. Or shall we say, even at that hour, that those who bid us repel him are provoking war? If so, there is nothing left but slavery; for there is no alternative between that and being allowed neither to defend ourselves nor to remain at peace. [60] Moreover, you have not the same interests at stake as the other cities, for it is not our subjection that Philip aims at, but our annihilation. He is well assured that you will not consent to be slaves; or if you consent, will never learn how to be slaves, for you are accustomed to rule others; but that you will be able, if you seize your opportunity, to cause him more trouble than all the rest of the world. [61]

Therefore you must needs bear in mind that this is a life-and-death struggle, and the men who have sold themselves to Philip must be abhorred and cudgelled to death, for it is impossible to quell the foes without, until you have punished those within your gates [who are Philip's servants; but if you are tripped by these stumbling-blocks, you are sure to be baulked of the others]. [62] What do you imagine is his motive in outraging you now—I think no other term describes his conduct—or why is it that, in deceiving the others, he at least confers benefits upon them, but in your case he is already resorting to threats? For example, the Thessalians were beguiled by his generosity into their present state of servitude; no words can describe how he formerly deceived the miserable Olynthians by his gift of Potidaea and many other places; [63] the Thebans he is now misleading, having handed over Boeotia to them and relieved them of a long and trying war. So each of these states has reaped some benefit from him; some of them have already paid the penalty, as all men know; the rest will pay it whenever the day of reckoning comes. As for you, I say nothing of your losses [in war],5 but in the very act of accepting the peace, how completely you were deceived, how grievously you were robbed! [64] Were you not deceived about Phocis, Thermopylae, the Thraceward districts, Doriscus, Serrium, Cersobleptes himself? Is not Philip now holding the city of the Cardians, and admitting that he holds it? Why then does he deal thus with the other Greeks, but not with you in the same way? Because ours is the one city in the world where immunity is granted to plead on behalf of our enemies, and where a man who has been bribed can safely address you in person, even when you have been robbed of your own. [65] It would not have been safe in Olynthus to plead Philip's cause, unless the Olynthian democracy had shared in the enjoyment of the revenues of Potidaea. It would not have been safe in Thessaly to plead Philip's cause, if the commoners of Thessaly had not shared in the advantages that Philip conferred when he expelled their tyrants and restored to them their Amphictyonic privileges. It would not have been safe at Thebes, until he gave them back Boeotia and wiped out the Phocians. [66] But at Athens, though Philip has not only robbed you of Amphipolis and the Cardian territory, but is also turning Euboea into a fortress to overawe you, and is even now on his way to attack Byzantium, it is safe to speak on Philip's behalf. Indeed, of these politicians, some who were beggars are suddenly growing rich, some unknown to name and fame are now men of honor and distinction; while you, on the contrary, have passed from honor to dishonor, from affluence to destitution. For a city's wealth I hold to be allies, credit, goodwill, and of all these you are destitute. [67] Because you are indifferent to these advantages and allow them to be taken from you, Philip is prosperous and powerful and formidable to Greeks and barbarians alike, while you are deserted and humiliated, famous for your well-stocked markets, but in provision for your proper needs, contemptible. Yet I observe that some of our speakers do not urge the same policy for you as for themselves; for you, they say, ought to remain quiet even when you are wronged; they themselves cannot remain quiet among you, though no man does them wrong.6 [68]

Then some irresponsible person comes forward and says, “Of course, you decline to make a definite proposal or to run any such risk. You are a coward and a milksop.” I am not foolhardy, impudent, and shameless, and I pray that I may never be; nevertheless I think myself more truly brave than many of your neck-or-nothing politicians. [69] For if anyone, Athenians, disregarding what will benefit the State, traffics in trials, confiscations, bribes, and indictments, he shows in this no true bravery, but, ensuring his own safety by the popularity of his speeches and measures, he is bold without risk. But whoever in your best interests often opposes your wishes, and never speaks to win favor, but always gives you of his best, and makes choice of that policy which is more under the dominion of chance than of calculation, and yet accepts the responsibility of either, he is the brave man. [70] Yes, and it is he who is the useful citizen, not those who for a moment's popularity have made havoc of the chief resources of the State. These men I am so far from envying or deeming them worthy citizens of our city, that if a man should say to me, “Speak for yourself, and tell us what good you have ever done the State,” though I might speak, men of Athens, of the equipment of war-galleys and of choruses, of money contributions and of the ransom of captives, and of other instances of liberality, I would say not a word of them, [71] but only reply that my policy has never been the policy of these men; that though I could, perhaps as well as the rest, accuse and bribe and confiscate and act in general as they are acting, I have never applied myself to any of these arts nor obeyed the promptings of greed or ambition, but continue to offer advice which does indeed lower me in your esteem, but which, if you will follow it, would contribute to your greatness. So much perhaps I may say of myself without offence. [72] Nor indeed does it seem to me the part of an honest citizen to devise political measures by which I shall at once take the highest place among you, but you the lowest among the nations. No, the advancement of the State must always go along with the measures proposed by good citizens, and they must always support the best and not the easiest policy; for towards the latter nature herself will lead the way, but to instruct you by speech and guide you to the former is the duty of the good citizen. [73]

Now I have even heard some such remark as this: that I, of course, always speak for the best, but that you get nothing from me except words, while what the city wants is deeds and a practical policy of some sort. I will myself explain how I stand in this matter, and I will be perfectly candid. I do not think that your adviser has any business except to give the best counsel he can, and I think I can easily prove that this is so. [74] For you know, of course, that the famous Timotheus7 once harangued you to the effect that you ought to send an expedition to save the Euboeans, when the Thebans were trying to enslave them, and his words ran something like this: “Tell me,” he said, “when you have got the Thebans in the island, are you deliberating how you will deal with them and what you ought to do? Will you not cover the sea with your war-galleys, men of Athens? Will you not rise up at once and march down to the Piraeus and drag them down the slips?” [75] That, then, was what Timotheus said, and that was what you did, and the union of the two brought about the practical result. But if Timotheus had given you the best advice he could （as indeed he did）, but you had shirked your duty and paid no heed to him, would the State have reaped any of the effects that then followed? Not a bit of it. So the same applies to whatever I utter now and whatever this man or that utters. For deeds you must look to yourselves, but for advice, the best that skill in speech can command, look to the speaker who rises to address you. [76]

Let me sum up before I leave the platform. I say that we must pay our contributions and keep together the force now in the field, rectifying whatever seems to be amiss, but not disbanding the whole for any adverse criticism. We must send ambassadors in every direction to instruct, to exhort, to act. While doing all this, we must also punish those politicians who take bribes, and we must hate them wherever found, in order that those who prove their own virtue and honesty may find that their advice has been beneficial to themselves as well as to the citizens at large. [77] If you deal thus with public affairs and cease to neglect them entirely, perhaps, yes, perhaps even now there may be a change for the better. If, however, you sit here, confining your zeal to cries of dissent or approval, and drawing back from every call to duty, I see not that any words, divorced from the necessary action on your part, can ever save the State.

1 The season of the Etesian winds; see Dem. 8.14.

2 i.e. to keep a jealous watch over our own officers.

3 As in Dem. 8.2, he alludes to Philip's absence on his Thracian campaign.

4 διαδικασία is a lawsuit between rival claimants to an estate, etc. The war-party and the peace-party are here rival claimants for the votes of the Athenians.

5 Some such words seem necessary to avoid a contradiction. The Greek is probably corrupt, though the same reading is found in Dem. 10.65.

6 They want you to remain passive, though they themselves lead an active political life, in Philip's interests. See the expansion of this passage in Dem. 10.70-74.

7 One of the most successful of the Athenian generals, from 378 till his eclipse in 354, when he was condemned and fined for failure in the Social War. His intimacy with Isocrates had made him also an effective speaker. His biography is included in the collection of Cornelius Nepos. The occasion here referred to is the Euboean expedition of 357, when Demosthenes served as trierarch.

Many speeches are delivered, men of Athens, at almost every meeting of the Assembly, about the wrongs that Philip has been committing, ever since the conclusion of peace, not only against you but also against the other states, and all the speakers would, I am sure, admit in theory, though they do not put it in practice, that the object both of our words and deeds must be to check and chastise his arrogance; yet I perceive that all our interests have been so completely betrayed and sacrificed, that—I am afraid it is an ominous thing to say, but yet the truth—even if all who address you had wanted to propose, and all of you had wanted to pass, measures that were bound to bring our affairs into the worst possible plight, I do not think they could have been in a worse condition than they are today. [2] Perhaps, indeed, this condition of our affairs may be attributed to many causes and not just to one or two, but a careful examination will convince you that it is above all due to those who study to win your favour rather than to give you the best advice. Some of them, Athenians, interested in maintaining a system which brings them credit and influence, have no thought for the future [and therefore think you should have none either]; while others, by blaming and traducing those in authority, make it their sole aim that our city shall concentrate her attention on punishing her own citizens, while Philip shall be free to say and do whatever he pleases. [3] But such methods of dealing with public affairs, familiar though they are to you, are the cause of your calamities. I claim for myself, Athenians, that if I utter some home-truths with freedom, I shall not thereby incur your displeasure. For look at it this way. In other matters you think it is so necessary to grant general freedom of speech to everyone in Athens that you even allow aliens and slaves to share in the privilege, and many more menials may be observed among you speaking their minds with more liberty than citizens enjoy in other states; but from your deliberations you have banished it utterly. [4] Hence the result is that in the Assembly your self-complacency is flattered by hearing none but pleasant speeches, but your policy and your practice are already involving you in the gravest peril. Therefore, if such is your temper now, I have nothing to say; but if, apart from flattery, you are willing to hear something to your advantage, I am ready to speak. For though the state of our affairs is in every way deplorable, and though much has been sacrificed, nevertheless it is possible, if you choose to do your duty, that all may yet be repaired. [5] And what I am going to say may perhaps seem a paradox, but it is true. The worst feature of the past is our best hope for the future. What, then, is that feature? It is that your affairs go wrong because you neglect every duty, great or small; since surely, if they were in this plight in spite of your doing all that was required, there would not be even a hope of improvement. But in fact it is your indifference and carelessness that Philip has conquered; your city he has not conquered. Nor have you been defeated—no! you have not even made a move. [6]

[If, then, we were all agreed that Philip is at war with Athens and is violating the peace, the only task of a speaker would be to come forward and recommend the safest and easiest method of defence; but since some of you are in such a strange mood that, though Philip is seizing cities, and retaining many of your possessions, and inflicting injury on everybody, you tolerate some speakers who repeatedly assert in the Assembly that the real aggressors are certain of ourselves, we must be on our guard and set this matter right. [7] For there is grave danger that anyone who proposes and urges that we shall defend ourselves may incur the charge of having provoked the war. I therefore first of all state and define this question—whether it is in our power to discuss the alternative of peace or war.]1 [8] If indeed Athens can remain at peace and if the choice rests with us— to take that point first—I personally feel that we are bound to do so; and if anyone says that we can, I call upon him to move a resolution and to do something and to play us no tricks; but if there is another person concerned, with sword in hand and a mighty force at his back, who imposes on you with the name of peace but himself indulges in acts of war, what is left but to defend ourselves? If you choose to follow his example and profess that you are at peace, I raise no objection. [9] But if anyone mistakes for peace an arrangement which will enable Philip, when he has seized everything else, to march upon us, he has taken leave of his senses, and the peace that he talks of is one that you observe towards Philip, but not Philip towards you. That is the advantage which he is purchasing by all his expenditure of money—that he should be at war with you, but that you should not be at war with him. [10]

If we are going to wait for him to acknowledge a state of war with us, we are indeed the simplest of mortals; for even if he marches straight against Attica and the Piraeus, he will not admit it, if we may judge from his treatment of the other states. [11] For take the case of the Olynthians; when he was five miles from their city, he told them there must be one of two things, either they must cease to reside in Olynthus, or he in Macedonia, though on all previous occasions, when accused of hostile intentions, he indignantly sent ambassadors to justify his conduct. Again, when he was marching against the Phocians, he still pretended that they were his allies, and Phocian ambassadors accompanied him on his march, and most people here at Athens contended that his passage through Thermopylae2 would be anything but a gain to the Thebans. [12] And then again quite lately, after entering Thessaly as a friend and ally, he seized Pherae and still retains it; and lastly, he informed those poor wretches, the people of Oreus, that he had sent his soldiers to pay them a visit of sympathy in all goodwill, for he understood that they were suffering from acute internal trouble, and it was the duty of true friends and allies to be at their side on such occasions. [13] And do you imagine that, while in the case of those who could have inflicted no harm, though they might perhaps have protected themselves against it, he preferred to deceive them rather than to crush them after due warning, in your case he will give warning of hostilities, especially when you are so eager to be deceived? [14] Impossible! For indeed he would be the most fatuous man on earth if, when you, his victims, charge him with no crime, but throw the blame on some of your own fellow-citizens, he should compose your mutual differences and jealousies, and invite you to turn them against himself, and should deprive his own hirelings of the excuses with which they put you off, saying that at any rate it is not Philip who is making war on Athens. [15]

But, in heaven's name, is there any intelligent man who would let words rather than deeds decide the question who is at peace and who is at war with him? Surely no one. Now it was Philip who at the very start, as soon as peace was concluded, before Diopithes was appointed general, before the force now in the Chersonese had been dispatched, proceeded to occupy Serrium and Doriscus and expelled from the Fort Serreum and the Sacred Mount the garrison which your own general had posted there. [16] Yet what did that move of his mean? For it was peace that he had sworn3 to observe; and let no one say, “What of all this? How do any of these things concern Athens?” For whether they were small things, or whether they were no concern of yours, may be another question. But religion and justice, whether a man violates them in a small matter or in a great, have the same importance. Tell me now: when he sends mercenaries to the Chersonese, your claim to which has been recognized by the king of Persia and by all the Greeks, when he admits that he is helping the Cardians and writes to tell you so, what does he mean? For he says that he is not at war, [17] but for my part, so far from admitting that in acting thus he is not observing the peace with you, I assert that when he lays hands on Megara, sets up tyrannies in Euboea, makes his way, as now, into Thrace, hatches plots in the Peloponnese, and carries out all operations with his armed force, he is breaking the peace and making war upon you—unless you are prepared to say that men who bring up the siege-engines are keeping the peace until they actually bring them to bear on the walls. But you will not admit that; for he who makes and devises the means by which I may be captured is at war with me, even though he has not yet hurled a javelin or shot a bolt. [18] In what then consists your danger, if anything should happen? In the alienation of the Hellespont, in the control of Megara and Euboea by one who is at war with you, and in the defection of the Peloponnesians to his side. Am I still to say that the man who brings this siege-engine to bear on your city is at peace with you? [19] So far from saying that, I date his hostility from the very day when he wiped out the Phocians. I say that you will be wise if you defend yourselves now, but if you let the opportunity pass, you will not be able to act even when you desire to. I so far dissent, Athenians, from all you counsellors that I do not think you ought to trouble yourselves now about the Chersonese or Byzantium. [20] Help them, if you will, guard them from harm [supply the troops already there with all that they require], but let your deliberations embrace all the Greek states and the great danger that besets them. But I wish to tell you the grounds for my alarm about our condition, so that if my reasoning is sound, you may adopt it as your own and take forethought for yourselves, even if you refuse to take it for the others also; but if I seem to you a driveler and a dotard, neither now nor at any other time pay any heed to me as if I were in my senses. [21]

As for the fact, then, that Philip rose to greatness from small and humble beginnings, that the Greek states are mutually disloyal and factious, and that the increase of Philip's power in the past was a far greater miracle than the completion of his conquests now that he has already gained so much, these and all such topics on which I might expatiate, I will pass over in silence. [22] I observe, however, that all men, and you first of all, have conceded to him something which has been the occasion of every war that the Greeks have ever waged. And what is that? The power of doing what he likes, of calmly plundering and stripping the Greeks one by one, and of attacking their cities and reducing them to slavery. [23] Yet your hegemony in Greece lasted seventy-five years, that of Sparta twenty-nine, and in these later times Thebes too gained some sort of authority after the battle of Leuctra. But neither to you nor to the Thebans nor to the Lacedaemonians did the Greeks ever yet, men of Athens, concede the right of unrestricted action, or anything like it. [24] On the contrary, when you, or rather the Athenians of that day, were thought to be showing a want of consideration in dealing with others, all felt it their duty, even those who had no grievance against them, to go to war in support of those who had been injured; and again, when the Lacedaemonians had risen to power and succeeded to your position of supremacy, and when they set to work to encroach on others and interfered unduly with the established order of things, all the Greeks were up in arms, even those who had no grievance of their own. [25] Why need I refer to the other states? Nay, we ourselves and the Lacedaemonians, though at the outset we could not have specified any wrong at each other's hands, thought it our duty to fight on account of wrongs which we saw the other states suffering. Yet all the faults committed by the Lacedaemonians in those thirty years, and by our ancestors in their seventy years of supremacy, are fewer, men of Athens, than the wrongs which Philip has done to the Greeks in the thirteen incomplete years in which he has been coming to the top—or rather, they are not a fraction of them. [26] [And this is easily proved by a short calculation.] I pass over Olynthus and Methone and Apollonia and the two and thirty cities in or near Thrace, all of which Philip has destroyed so ruthlessly that a traveler would find it hard to say whether they had ever been inhabited. I say nothing of the destruction of the important nation of the Phocians. But how stands the case of the Thessalians? Has he not robbed them of their free constitutions and of their very cities, setting up tetrarchies in order to enslave them, not city by city, but tribe by tribe? [27] Are not tyrannies already established in Euboea, an island, remember, not far from Thebes and Athens? Does he not write explicitly in his letters, “I am at peace with those who are willing to obey me”? And he does not merely write this without putting it into practice; but he is off to the Hellespont, just as before he hurried to Ambracia; in the Peloponnese he occupies the important city of Elis; only the other day he intrigued against the Megarians. Neither the Greek nor the barbarian world is big enough for the fellow's ambition. [28] And we Greeks see and hear all this, and yet we do not send embassies to one another and express our indignation. We are in such a miserable position, we have so entrenched ourselves in our different cities, that to this very day we can do nothing that our interest or our duty demands; we cannot combine, we cannot take any common pledge of help or friendship; [29] but we idly watch the growing power of this man, each bent （or so it seems to me） on profiting by the interval afforded by another's ruin, taking not a thought, making not an effort for the salvation of Greece. For that Philip, like the recurrence or attack of a fever or some other disease, is threatening even those who think themselves out of reach, of that not one of you is ignorant. [30] Ay, and you know this also, that the wrongs which the Greeks suffered from the Lacedaemonians or from us, they suffered at all events at the hands of true-born sons of Greece, and they might have been regarded as the acts of a legitimate son, born to great possessions, who should be guilty of some fault or error in the management of his estate: so far he would deserve blame and reproach, yet it could not be said that it was not one of the blood, not the lawful heir who was acting thus. [31] But if some slave or superstitious bastard had wasted and squandered what he had no right to, heavens! how much more monstrous and exasperating all would have called it! Yet they have no such qualms about Philip and his present conduct, though he is not only no Greek, nor related to the Greeks, but not even a barbarian from any place that can be named with honor, but a pestilent knave from Macedonia, whence it was never yet possible to buy a decent slave. [32]

Yet what is wanting to crown his insolence? Not content with the destruction of cities, is he not organizing the Pythian games, the common festival of the Greeks, and if he cannot be present in person, sending his menials to act as stewards? [Is he not master of Thermopylae and the passes into Greece, holding those places with his garrisons and his mercenaries? Has he not the right of precedence at the Oracle, ousting us and the Thessalians and the Dorians and the rest of the Amphictyons from a privilege which not even all Greek states can claim?] [33] Does he not dictate to the Thessalians their form of government? Does he not send mercenaries, some to Porthmus to expel the Eretrian democracy, others to Oreus to set up the tyranny of Philistides? Yet the Greeks see all this and suffer it. They seem to watch him just as they would watch a hailstorm, each praying that it may not come their way, but none making any effort to stay its course. [34] And it is not only his outrages on Greece that go unavenged, but even the wrongs which each suffers separately. For nothing can go beyond that. Are not the Corinthians hit by his invasion of Ambracia and Leucas? The Achaeans by his vow to transfer Naupactus to the Aetolians? The Thebans by his theft of Echinus? And is he not marching even now against his4 allies the Byzantines? [35] Of our own possessions, not to mention other places, is he not holding Cardia, the greatest city in the Chersonese? In spite of such treatment, we hesitate one and all, we play the coward, we keep an eye on our neighbors, distrusting one another rather than our common foe. Yet if he treats us all with such brutality, what do you think he will do when he has got each of us separately into his clutches? [36]

What then is the cause of this? For not without reason, not without just cause, the Greeks of old were as eager for freedom as their descendants today are for slavery. There was something, men of Athens, something which animated the mass of the Greeks but which is lacking now, something which triumphed over the wealth of Persia, which upheld the liberties of Hellas, which never lost a single battle by sea or land, something the decay of which has ruined everything and brought our affairs to a state of chaos. And what was that? [37] [It was nothing recondite or subtle, but simply that] men who took bribes from those who wished to rule Greece or ruin her, were hated by all, and it was the greatest calamity to be convicted of receiving a bribe, and such a man was punished with the utmost severity [and no intercession, no pardon was allowed]. [38] At each crisis, therefore, the opportunity for action, with which fortune often equips the careless against the vigilant [and those who shrink from deeds against those who fulfil their duties], could not be bought at a price from our politicians or our generals; no, nor our mutual concord, nor our distrust of tyrants and barbarians, nor, in a word, any such advantage. [39] Now, however, all these things have been sold in open market, and in place of them we have imported vices which have infected Greece with a mortal sickness. And what are those vices? Envy of the man who has secured his gains; contempt for him who confesses; [pardon for those who are convicted;] hatred for him who censures such dealings; and every other vice that goes hand in hand with corruption. [40] For war-galleys, men in abundance, money and material without stint, everything by which one might gauge the strength of our cities, these we as a body possess today in number and quantity far beyond the Greeks of former times. But all our resources are rendered useless, powerless, worthless by these traffickers. [41]

That this is so, you surely see for yourselves with regard to the present, and you need no evidence of mine, but that it was the opposite in the days of old I will prove, not in my own words, but by the written record of your ancestors, which they engraved on a bronze pillar and set up in the Acropolis. [It was not for their own use, for without these documents their instinct was right; but it was that you might have these examples to remind you that such cases ought to be regarded seriously.] [42] “Arthmius of Zelea,” it says, “son of Pythonax, outlaw and enemy of the people of Athens and of their allies, himself and his family.” Then is recorded the reason for this punishment: “because he conveyed the gold of the Medes to the Peloponnese.” So runs the inscription. [43] I earnestly implore you to consider what was the intention of the Athenians who did this thing, or what was their proud claim. They proscribed as their enemy and the enemy of their allies, disfranchising him and his family, a man of Zelea, one Arthmius, a slave of the Great King （for Zelea is in Asia）, because in the service of his master he conveyed gold, not to Athens but to the Peloponnese.5 [44] This was not outlawry as commonly understood; for what mattered it to a native of Zelea if he was to be debarred from a share in the common rights of Athenian citizens? But the statutes relating to murder provide for cases where prosecution for murder is not allowed [but where it is a righteous act to slay the murderer]; “and he shall die an outlaw,” says the legislator. This simply means that anyone slaying a member of Arthmius's family would be free from blood-guilt. [45] So our ancestors thought that they were bound to consider the welfare of all Greeks, for except on that assumption bribery and corruption in the Peloponnese would be no concern of theirs; and in chastising and punishing all whom they detected, they went so far as to set the offenders' names on a pillar. The natural result was that the Greek power was dreaded by the barbarian, not the barbarian by the Greeks. But that is no longer so. For that is not your attitude towards these and other offences. What then is your attitude? [46] [You know it yourselves. For why should you bear the whole blame, when all the other Greeks are just as bad as you? That is why I assert that the present crisis calls for earnest zeal and wise counsel. What counsel?]6 Do you want me to tell you, and will you promise not to be angry?“ [He reads from an official record] ”7 [47]

Now there is a foolish argument advanced by those who want to reassure the citizens. Philip, they say, after all is not yet what the Lacedaemonians were; they were masters of every sea and land; they enjoyed the alliance of the king of Persia; nothing could stand against them: and yet our city defended itself even against them and was not overwhelmed. But for my own part, while practically all the arts have made a great advance and we are living today in a very different world from the old one, I consider that nothing has been more revolutionized and improved than the art of war. [48] For in the first place I am informed that in those days the Lacedaemonians, like everyone else, would spend the four or five months of the summer “season” in invading and laying waste the enemy's territory with heavy infantry and levies of citizens, and would then retire home again; and they were so old-fashioned, or rather such good citizens,8 that they never used money to buy an advantage from anyone, but their fighting was of the fair and open kind. [49] But now you must surely see that most disasters are due to traitors, and none are the result of a regular pitched battle. On the other hand you hear of Philip marching unchecked, not because he leads a phalanx of heavy infantry, but because he is accompanied by skirmishers, cavalry, archers, mercenaries, and similar troops. [50] When, relying on this force, he attacks some people that is at variance with itself, and when through distrust no one goes forth to fight for his country, then he brings up his artillery and lays siege. I need hardly tell you that he makes no difference between summer and winter and has no season set apart for inaction. [51] Since, however, you all know this, you must take it into account and not let the war pass into your own country; you must not invite catastrophe through keeping your eyes fixed on the simple strategy of your old war with the Lacedaemonians, but arrange your political affairs and your military preparations so that your line of defence may be as far away from Athens as possible, give him no chance of stirring from his base, and never come to close grips with him. [52] For so far as a campaign is concerned, provided, men of Athens, we are willing to do what is necessary, we have many natural advantages, such as the nature of his territory, much of which may be harried and devastated, and countless others; but for a pitched battle he is in better training than we are. [53]

But it is not enough to adopt these suggestions, nor even to oppose him with active military measures, but both from calculation and on principle you must show your hatred of those who speak publicly on his behalf; and you must reflect that it is impossible to defeat the enemies of our city until you have chastised those who within our very walls make themselves their servants. [54] And that, as all Heaven is my witness, you will never be able to do; but you have reached such a height of folly or of madness or—I know not what to call it, for this fear too has often haunted me, that some demon is driving you to your doom, that from love of calumny or envy or ribaldry, or whatever your motive may be, you clamor for a speech from these hirelings, some of whom would not even disclaim that title, and you derive amusement from their vituperations. [55] This is serious enough, but there is worse to follow; for you have granted to these men more security for the pursuance of their policy than to your own defenders. Yet mark what troubles are in store for those who lend an ear to such counsellors. I will mention some facts which will be familiar to you all. [56]

At Olynthus there were two parties in the state: Philip's men, entirely subservient to him, and the patriots, striving to preserve the freedom of their countrymen. Which, pray, ruined their country? Which betrayed the cavalry, whose betrayal sealed the doom of Olynthus? The partisans of Philip; the men who, when the city was still standing, tried to defame and slander the patriotic statesmen, until the Olynthian democracy was actually induced to expel Apollonides.9 [57]

Now it was not at Olynthus only that this habit produced every kind of evil result; but at Eretria, when the democrats, ridding themselves of Plutarchus and his mercenaries, held the city together with Porthmus, some of them were for handing the government over to you, others to Philip. The latter on most points, or rather on all, gained the ear of the sorely tried and ill-starred Eretrians, and at last persuaded them to expel their real champions. [58] For of course Philip, whom they fancied their ally, sent Hipponicus with a thousand mercenaries, razed the walls of Porthmus, and set up three tyrants, Hipparchus, Automedon, and Clitarchus. Twice since then they have tried to deliver themselves, and twice he has driven them from their homes [on the first occasion sending Eurylochus with his mercenaries, on the second Parmenio]. [59]

And what need is there to mention most of the cases? But at Oreus Philistides, Menippus, Socrates, Thoas, and Agapaeus, the very men who now control the city, were, as everyone knew, Philip's agents, but Euphraeus, a man who once resided here at Athens, was working for the freedom and emancipation of his countrymen. [60] It would be a long story to tell you how this man was repeatedly outraged and insulted by the people; but a year before the capture of Eretria, detecting the machinations of Philistides and his party, he denounced him as a traitor. Then a number of fellows banded together, with Philip for their paymaster and managing director, and dragged Euphraeus off to prison for setting the city in an uproar. [61] When the democrats of Oreus saw this, instead of rescuing him and knocking the others on the head, they showed no resentment against them and gloated over Euphraeus, saying that he deserved all he had got. Then having all the liberty of action they desired, they intrigued for the capture of the city and prepared to carry out their plot, while any of the common folk who saw what they were at were terrorized into silence, having the fate of Euphraeus before their eyes. And so abject was their condition that, with this danger looming ahead, no one dared to breathe a syllable until the enemy, having completed their preparations, were approaching the gates; and then some were for defence, the others for surrender. [62] But since that base and shameful capture of the city, the latter have been its rulers and tyrants; those who sheltered them before, and had been ready to take any measures against Euphraeus, were rewarded with banishment or death; and the noble Euphraeus slew himself, giving thus a practical proof of the honesty and disinterested patriotism of his opposition to Philip. [63]

Perhaps you wonder why the people of Olynthus and Eretria and Oreus were more favorably inclined to Philip's advocates than to their own. The explanation is the same as at Athens, that the patriots, however much they desire it, cannot sometimes say anything agreeable, for they are obliged to consider the safety of the state; but the others by their very efforts to be agreeable are playing into Philip's hands. The patriots demanded a war-subsidy, the others denied its necessity; the patriots bade them fight on and mistrust Philip, the others bade them keep the peace, until they fell into the snare. [64] Not to go into particulars, it is the same tale everywhere, one party speaking to please their audience, the other giving advice that would have ensured their safety. But at the last there were many things that the people were induced to concede, not as before for their own gratification nor through ignorance, but gradually yielding because they thought that their discomfiture was inevitable and complete. [65] And, by Heaven, that is what I certainly fear will be your experience, when you count your chances and discover that there is nothing left for you to do. And yet I pray, Athenians, that such may not be the issue of events. Better to die a thousand times than pay court to Philip [and abandon any of your loyal counsellors.] A fine return the people of Oreus have gained for handing themselves over to Philip's friends and rejecting Euphraeus! [66] A fine return the democrats of Eretria have gained for spurning your embassy and capitulating to Clitarchus! They are slaves, doomed to the whipping-post and the scaffold. A fine clemency he showed to the Olynthians, who voted Lasthenes their master of the horse and banished Apollonides! [67] It is folly and cowardice to cherish such hopes, to follow ill counsel and refuse to perform any fraction of your duties, to lend an ear to the advocates of your enemies and imagine that your city is so great that no conceivable danger can befall it. [68] Ay, and a disgrace too it is to have to say, when all is over, “Why! who would have thought it? For of course we ought to have done this or that, and not so and so.” Many things could be named by the Olynthians today, which would have saved them from destruction if only they had then foreseen them. Many could be named by the Orites, many by the Phocians, many by every ruined city. [69] But of what use to them is that? While the vessel is safe, whether it be a large or a small one, then is the time for sailor and helmsman arid everyone in his turn to show his zeal and to take care that it is not capsized by anyone's malice or inadvertence; but when the sea has overwhelmed it, zeal is useless. [70] So we too, Athenians, as long as we are safe, blessed with a very great city, ample advantages, and the fairest repute—what are we to do? Perhaps some of my hearers have long been eager to ask that question. I solemnly promise that I will answer it and will also move a resolution, for which you can vote if so disposed. To begin with ourselves, we must make provision for our defence, I mean with war-galleys, funds, and men; for even if all other states succumb to slavery, we surely must fight the battle of liberty. [71] Then having completed all these preparations and made our purpose clear, we must lose no time in calling upon the other Greeks, and we must inform them by sending ambassadors [in every direction, to the Peloponnese, to Rhodes, to Chios, to the Great King—for even his interests are not unaffected if we prevent Philip from subduing the whole country—] so that if you win them over, you may have someone to share your dangers and your expenses when the time comes, or if not, that you may at least delay the course of events. [72] For since the war is against an individual and not against the might of an organized community, even delay is not without its use; nor were those embassies useless which you sent round the Peloponnese last year to denounce Philip, when I and our good friend Polyeuctus here and Hegesippus and the rest went from city to city and succeeded in checking him, so that he never invaded Ambracia nor even started against the Peloponnese. [73] I do not, however, suggest that you should invite the rest, unless you are ready to do for yourselves what is necessary; for it would be futile to abandon our own interests and pretend that we are protecting those of others, or to overlook the present dangers and alarm our neighbors with dangers to come. That is not my meaning. But I do contend that we must send supplies to the forces in the Chersonese and satisfy all their demands, and while we make preparation ourselves, we must summon, collect, instruct, and exhort the rest of the Greeks. That is the duty of a city with a reputation such as yours enjoys. [74] But if you imagine that Greece will be saved by Chalcidians or Megarians, while you run away from the task, you are wrong. For they may think themselves lucky if they can save themselves separately. But this is a task for you; it was for you that your ancestors won this proud privilege and bequeathed it to you at great and manifold risk. [75] But if every man sits idle, consulting his own pleasure and careful to avoid his own duty, not only will he find no one to do it for him, but I fear that those duties that we wish to shirk may all be forced upon us at once. [76]

These are my views and these are my proposals, and if they are carried out, I believe that even now we may retrieve our fortunes. If anyone has anything better to propose, let him speak and advise. But whatever you decide, I pray heaven it may be to your advantage.

1 Probably the second clause has no connection with the first, but is an alternative form of the beginning of the next sentence.

2 In July 346, when the Phocians were holding Thermopylae against Philip, the Athenians refused to help them, being misled by Aeschines and Philocrates, who represented that Philip's real hostility was directed against the Thebans. See Dem. 18.35 and Dem. 5.10.

3 Not strictly true; for Philip had not yet taken the oath, though the Athenians had. Hence Blass wished to readεἰρήνη . . . ὠμώμοτο.

4 This translation is justified by Dem. 18.87. Others “their allies,” since the Byzantines are known to have helped the Thebans with money in the Sacred War. （Cauer, Del. Inscr. Gr. 353.）

5 The occasion of this decree, to which Demosthenes refers in Dem. 19.271, is not known. According to Plut. Them. 6 it was Themistocles who proposed it; but a schol. on Aristides names Cimon. The date in the former case would be before 471; in the latter it would be after 457, and may be connected with the mission of Megabazus to Sparta in 455, mentioned by Thuc. 1.109.

6 The last two words seem pointless. Perhaps τίνος; is the attempt of a scribe to join the longer to the shorter version.

7 A frank description of the Athenian attitude, which should follow here, has dropped out, and the lemma, which is found in S and other good MSS., seems to be a poor attempt to fill the gap. It is difficult to imagine any official document that would be of use to the orator here.

8 The Greek means true to the spirit of a free, constitutional state. Aristotle describes theπολιτικὸν πλῆθοςas one which is “naturally warlike and qualified to rule or be ruled according to laws which distribute offices by merit” （Aristot. Pol. 3.17.4）.

9 The democratic leader, afterwards honored with the citizenship of Athens.

The matters that you are debating, men of Athens, are to my mind so important and even vital to the State, that I will endeavour to offer you what I consider profitable advice on the subject. While the faults that have produced this unhappy state of things are neither few nor recently accumulated, there is nothing, men of Athens, more vexing at the present time than the way in which you detach your thoughts from affairs, and display an interest only so long as you sit here listening, or when some fresh item of news arrives; after that, each man goes home, and not only pays no attention to public business, but does not even recall it to mind. [2] Now the extent of the recklessness and rapacity that Philip shows in his dealings with all men is indeed as great as it has been described to you; but how impossible it is to stay him in this career by argument and declamation, assuredly no one is ignorant. For indeed, if no single thing else can teach a man the truth of that, let him weigh the following consideration. When we have had to speak in defence of our rights, we have never yet been defeated or proved in the wrong, but in every case we vanquish all our opponents and have the best of it in argument. [3] Is, then, Philip any the worse off for that, or Athens any the better? Far from it; for afterwards, when he takes up arms and marches to battle, ready to risk all he has, and we sit idle, alike those who have pleaded our cause and those who have been listening to them, then, naturally enough, deeds outweigh words, and the world in general gives heed, not to what we once said with justice or might now say, but to what we do. And what we do is insufficient to protect any of the victims of injustice; in fact, I need say no more about it. [4] Therefore, as the Greeks in every city are divided into these two parties—the one desiring neither to rule others by force nor to be slaves to any man, but to enjoy liberty and equality under a free constitution; the other eager to rule their fellow-countrymen, but to take their orders from some third person, who they think will enable them to compass their ends—Philip's faction, those who hanker after tyrannies and oligarchies, have everywhere gained the supremacy, and I doubt whether of all the states there is any stable democracy left except our own. [5] Moreover, this supremacy of the constitution-mongers who rely on Philip's support has been gained by all the devices usual in politics, first and foremost by providing a dispenser of wealth to such as covet it, secondly, and not less effectively, by having at their back a force capable of crushing their opponents on any occasion when they may call upon it. [6] But we, Athenians, are not only behindhand in this respect, but we cannot even rouse ourselves from sleep; we are like men who have drunk mandragora or some such drug. Hence, I believe—for I must speak the truth as I conceive it—we have been so discredited and despised that of those who are involved in actual danger some dispute with us about the right of leadership, others about the meeting-place for a congress, and some have made up their minds to defend themselves single-handed rather than with us. [7]

What is my object in treating this matter so fully? For I protest in Heaven's name that I have no ambition to incur your hostility. It is that each one of you, Athenians, may know and realize this—that in state affairs, as well as in private life, daily indifference and carelessness do not make their result felt at once on each occasion when duty is neglected, but come home to us when the total result of our policy is seen. [8] Look at Serrium and Doriscus; for these were the places that were disregarded immediately after the peace, and many of you perhaps do not even know of their existence. Yet it was your neglect and abandonment of them that ruined Thrace and Cersobleptes, who was your ally. Again, Philip, seeing that these were overlooked and were receiving no help from you, proceeded to raze Porthmus to the ground and founded a tyranny in Euboea over against Attica as a menace to you. [9] Because we neglected Euboea, Megara was very nearly captured. You showed no concern nor anxiety about any of these proceedings, and gave no indication that you would not allow Philip to continue them; so he bought up Antrones and soon afterwards got Oreus under his control. [10] I pass over many other instances, such as Pherae, the raid against Ambracia, the massacres at Elis, and countless others.1 I have gone into these details, not to give you a complete catalogue of the victims of Philip's oppression and injustice, but to make it clear to you that he will never desist from molesting all of us and bringing us under his sway, unless someone restrains him. [11]

But there are some who, without waiting to hear the speeches on these questions, are in the habit of asking at once, “What then ought we to do?”—not in order to do it, when they have heard it, for if so, they would be the most helpful of all citizens, but simply to get rid of the speaker. Nevertheless, you must be told what you ought to do. First, men of Athens, you must fix this firmly in your minds, that Philip is at war with us and has broken the peace, and that he is ill-disposed and hostile to the whole city and to the very soil on which the city stands, and, I will add, to the gods that dwell in it; and may those same gods complete his ruin! The chief object, however, of his arms and his diplomacy is our free constitution, and on nothing in the world is he more bent than on its destruction. [12] And it is in a way inevitable that he should now be acting thus. For observe! He wants to rule, and he has made up his mind that you, and you only, bar the way. He has long injured you; of nothing is he more conscious than of that. For it is by holding the cities that are really yours that he retains safe possession of all the rest; [13] and if he gave up Amphipolis and Potidaea, even Macedonia would be no safe place for him. He knows, then, these two facts—that he is intriguing against you and that you are aware of it. Assuming that you are intelligent, he concludes that you hate him. Besides these weighty considerations, he knows for certain that even if he masters all else, his power will be precarious as long as you remain a democracy, but if ever he meets with some mischance （and there are many to which mankind is liable）, all the forces that are now under restraint will be attracted to your side. [14] For nature has not equipped you to seek aggrandizement and secure empire, but you are clever at thwarting another's designs and wresting from him his gains, and quick to confound utterly the plots of the ambitious and vindicate the freedom of all mankind. Therefore he does not want to have the Athenian tradition of liberty watching to seize every chance against himself; nor is his reasoning here either faulty or idle. [15] This, then, is the first thing needful, to recognize in Philip the inveterate enemy of constitutional government and democracy; and your second need is to convince yourselves that all his activity and all his organization is preparing the way for an attack on our city. For none of you is so simple as to believe that though Philip covets these wretched objects in Thrace—for what else can one call Drongilus and Cabyle and Mastira and the other places he is said to be now holding ?—and though he endures toil and winter storms and deadly peril for the privilege of taking them, [16] yet he does not covet the Athenian harbours and dockyards and war-galleys and the place itself and the glory of it—and never may Philip or any other man make himself master of these by the conquest of our city!—but will allow you to retain them, while he winters in that purgatory for the sake of the rye and millet of the Thracian store-pits. [17] It is not so, but it is to win these prizes that he devotes his activities to all those other objects.

Therefore each must know and feel in his own mind the truth of this, but you must not, of course, call for a declaration of war from the statesman who is trying, in all honesty, to give you the best advice; for that would be the act of men who want to find someone to fight with, not of men who seek the interests of their state.2 [18] For consider. If for his first violation of the peace, or his second or third—for there was a long series of them—someone had proposed a declaration of war against him, and if Philip, just as he is doing now when no one proposes such a declaration, had gone to the help of the Cardians, would not the proposer have been suppressed,3 and blamed by everybody as the real author of Philip's expedition? [19] Then do not look about for a scapegoat for Philip's sins, someone whom you can throw for his hirelings to rend limb from limb. Do not vote for war and then fall to disputing among yourselves whether you ought or ought not to have done so, but imitate his methods of warfare, supplying those who are now resisting him with money and whatever else they need, and raising a war-fund yourselves, Athenians, and providing an army, swift-sailing galleys, horses, cavalry-transports, and everything that war requires. [20] For at present our system is a mockery, and, by Heaven, I do not believe that even Philip himself would pray that Athens might act otherwise than she is acting. You are behind your time and waste your money; you look round for someone to manage the business and then quarrel with him; you throw the blame on one another. I will explain how this comes about and will tell you how to stop it. [21] Never yet, Athenians, have you instituted or organized a single plan of action properly at the start, but you always follow in the track of each event, and then, when you find yourselves too late, you give up the pursuit; [22] when the next event occurs, you are again in a bustle of preparation. But that is not the way. If you trust to occasional levies, you can never gain any of your essential objects; but you must first raise a force and provide for its maintenance, and appoint paymasters and clerks, and arrange that there shall be the strictest watch kept over your expenditure, and afterwards you must demand from your paymasters an account of their moneys, and from the general an account of his campaign, and you must leave the general no excuse for sailing elsewhere or engaging in any other business. [23] If you do this, and you are really in earnest about it, you will either compel Philip to keep the peace fairly and to stay in one place, or you will fight him on equal terms; and perhaps—perhaps, just as you are now inquiring what Philip is doing and where he is marching, so he may be anxious to know where the Athenian force is bound for, and in what quarter it will appear. [24]

But if anyone thinks that all this means great expense and much toil and worry, he is quite correct, but if he reckons up what will hereafter be the result to Athens if she refuses to act, he will conclude that it is to our interest to perform our duty willingly. For if you have the guarantee of some god, since no mere mortal could be a satisfactory surety for such an event, that if you remain inactive and abandon everything, Philip will not in the end march against yourselves, [25] by Zeus and all the other gods, it would be disgraceful and unworthy of you and of the resources of your city and the record of your ancestors to abandon all the other Greeks to enslavement for the sake of your own ease, and I for one would rather die than be guilty of proposing such a policy. [26] All the same, if someone does propose it and wins your assent, so be it; offer no resistance, sacrifice everything. But if no one approves of this, and if on the contrary we all of us foresee that the more we allow him to extend his power, the stronger and more formidable we shall find him in war, what escape is open to us, or why do we delay? When, men of Athens, shall we consent to do our duty? [27] “Whenever it is necessary,” you will say. But what any free man would call necessity is not merely present now, but is long ago past, and from the necessity that constrains a slave we must surely pray to be delivered. Do you ask the difference? The strongest necessity that a free man feels is shame for his own position, and I know not if we could name a stronger; but for a slave necessity means stripes and bodily outrage, unfit to name here, from which Heaven defend us! [28]

Now, men of Athens, with regard to such public services as it is the duty of everyone to discharge, both with person and with property, that there should be a disposition to avoid them is not right—indeed, far from it—but still it does admit of some excuse notwithstanding; but to refuse even to listen to all that you ought to hear and all that you are bound to decide deserves, at such a time as this, absolute condemnation. [29] Your habit, then, is not to listen until, as now, the events themselves are upon you, and not to discuss any question at your leisure but whenever Philip makes his preparations, you neglect the chance of doing the same, and you are too remiss to make counter-preparations; and if anyone speaks out, you drive him from the platform, but when you learn of the loss of this place or the siege of that, then you pay attention and begin to prepare. [30] But the time to have listened and made your decision was just then, when you would not do it; now, when you are listening, is the time to act and put your preparations to use. Therefore in consequence of these bad habits you alone reverse the general practice of mankind; for other people deliberate before the event, but you after the event. [31]

The one thing that remains and that ought to have been done long ago, though even now the chance is not lost, I will tell you. There is nothing that the State needs so much for the coming struggle as money. Some strokes of good fortune we have enjoyed without our design, and if we make the right use of them, the desired results may perhaps follow. For first, the men whom the king of Persia trusts and has accepted as his “benefactors,”4 hate Philip and are at war with him. [32] Secondly, the agent5 who was privy to all Philip's schemes against the king of Persia has been kidnapped, and the king will hear of all these plots, not as the complaint of Athenians, whom he might suspect of speaking for our own private advantage, but from the lips of the very man who planned and carried them out, so that their credit is established, and the only suggestion for our ambassadors to make is one which the king would be delighted to hear, [33] that the man who is wronging both parties should be punished by both in common, and that Philip is much more dangerous to the king if he has attacked us first, for if we are left to our own resources and anything happens to us, he will soon be marching confidently against the king. I think you ought to send an embassy to put all these matters before the king, and you ought to drop the foolish prejudice that has so often brought about your discomfiture—“the barbarian,” “the common foe of us all,” and all such phrases. [34] For my part, whenever I see a man afraid of one who dwells at Susa and Ecbatana and insisting that he is ill-disposed to Athens, though he helped to restore our fortunes in the past and was even now making overtures to us6（and if you did not accept them but voted their rejection, the fault is not his）; and when I find the same man using very different language about this plunderer of the Greeks, who is extending his power, as you see, at our very doors and in the heart of Greece, I am astonished, and, whoever he may be, it is I that fear him, just because he does not fear Philip. [35]

Now there is also another matter, the misrepresentation of which by unfair obloquy and in intemperate language is injuring the State, and furthermore is affording a pretext for those who are unwilling to perform any of their duties as citizens; indeed, you will find that in every case where a man has failed to do his duty, this has been given as the excuse. I am really afraid to speak on this subject, but I will do so nevertheless; [36] for I think I shall be able, with advantage to the State, to plead the cause both of the poor against the rich and of the property-owners against the necessitous. If we could banish from our midst both the obloquy which some heap on the Theoric Fund,7 and also the fear that the Fund will not be maintained without doing a great deal of harm, we could not perform a greater service nor one more likely to strengthen the whole body politic. [37] Follow my argument while I state first the case of those who are regarded as the poorer classes. There was a time not long ago when the revenue of your state did not exceed a hundred and thirty talents, and yet of those competent to undertake the trierarchy or pay the property-tax there is not one that declined the duty that devolved on him in the absence of a surplus; but the war-galleys sailed out, and the money came in, and we did all that was required. [38] Since then fortune has smiled on us and increased our revenues, and the exchequer now receives four hundred instead of one hundred talents, though no property-owner suffers any loss but is rather the gainer, for all the rich citizens come up to receive their share of this increase, as indeed they have a perfect right to do. [39] What then do we mean by reproaching one another for this and making it an excuse for doing nothing, unless it is that we grudge the relief which the poor have received at the hands of fortune? I for one shall not blame them,8 nor do I think it fair to do so. [40] For in private life I do not observe that the young man adopts that attitude towards his seniors, or that any human being is so insensible or unreasonable that he refuses to do anything himself unless everybody does the same; and indeed such a case would be covered by the laws for ill-usage,9 for I suppose the contribution assessed by both authorities, by nature and by law, ought to be brought honestly and paid cheerfully to the parents. [41] Therefore, just as each one of us has a parent, so ought we to regard the collective citizens as the common parents of the whole State, and so far from depriving them of anything that the State bestows, we ought, if there were no such grant, to look elsewhere for means to save any of their wants from being overlooked. [42] So then, if the wealthy would accept this principle, I think they would be doing not only what is fair, but also what is expedient; for to deprive one citizen of necessaries is to make many of them unite in disaffection towards the government. I would also counsel the poorer classes to abolish the grievance which makes the propertied class discontented with the system, and gives them just cause for assailing it. [43]

I proceed, in the same way as before, to state the case for the rich, and I shall not shrink from speaking the truth. For I cannot imagine anyone, or at least any Athenian, so obdurate and cruel-hearted as to feel annoyed when he sees the poor and those who lack necessaries receiving these boons. [44] But where does our practice break down, and where lies the grievance? It is when the rich see certain persons transferring this usage from public moneys to private property; when the speaker is raised to instant greatness among you and even to immortality, as far as his privilege can secure it; and when your shouts of open approval are contradicted by your secret vote.10 [45] All this breeds distrust and resentment. For we are bound, Athenians, to share equitably with one another the privileges of citizenship, the wealthy feeling secure to lead their own lives and haunted by no fears on that account, but in the face of dangers making over their property to the commonwealth for its defence; while the rest must realize that State-property is common property, duly receiving their share of it, but recognizing that private wealth belongs to the possessor. In this way a small state grows great, and a great one is kept great. This may pass for a verbal statement of the duties of each class; for the legal performance of those duties some organization is necessary. [46]

Of our present difficulties and of the existing confusion the causes are many and of long standing, but if you are willing to hear them, I am ready to speak. Men of Athens, you have deserted the post in which your ancestors left you; you have been persuaded by politicians of this sort that to be paramount in Greece, to possess a standing force, and to help all the oppressed, is a superfluous task and an idle expense; while you fondly imagined that to live in peace, to neglect all your duties, to abandon all your possessions and let others seize them one by one, ensured wonderful prosperity and complete security. [47] In consequence of this, a rival has stepped into the position that you ought to have filled, and it is he who has become prosperous and great and ruler over many things. And rightly so; for there is a prize, honorable, great, and glorious, a prize for which the greatest of our states once spent all their time in contending, but since misfortune has dogged the Lacedaemonians, and the Phocian War has left the Thebans no leisure, and we are heedless, he has grasped it without a struggle. [48] Therefore fear is the portion of the others, but his the possession of many allies and a mighty force; and such great and manifold troubles now encompass all the Greeks that it is not easy to advise what ought to be done. [49]

Yet, men of Athens, perilous as is the present situation in my judgement, none of all the Greeks are in greater danger than you, not only because you are the chief object of Philip's plots, but because you are the most disposed to inaction. If therefore, noting the abundance and cheapness of goods for sale in your markets, you have been beguiled by these things into the belief that the city is in no danger, your estimate of the situation is contrary to all right and reason. [50] For a market or a fair might be judged on such evidence to be well or ill stocked; but a city, which every aspirant to the rule of Greece has regarded as his only possible opponent and as champion of the freedom of all, must surely not be tested by her market-stuff to see whether all is well with her, but by her ability to trust the loyalty of her allies, by her strength in ams—these are the qualities that you must look for in the city; and these in your case are all untrustworthy and unsound. [51] You will understand it if you look at it in this way. When have the affairs of Greece been in the greatest confusion? For no other occasion than the present could possibly be named by anyone. All during the past Greece was divided into two camps, the Lacedaemonians' and ours, and of the other Greeks some took their orders from us, others from them. The king of Persia, in himself, was equally distrusted by all, but by taking up the cause of the losing side in the struggle, he retained their confidence until he could put them on an equality with the others; but thereafter he was no less hated by those he had saved than by those who had been his enemies from the beginning. [52] But in the first place, the king is now well-disposed to all the Greeks, and yet to us least of all, unless we can effect some immediate improvement. In the second place, many so-called “protectors” are springing up everywhere, and all states are rivals for the leadership, but unfortunately some hold aloof, in mutual jealousy and distrust, and so each state has isolated itself—Argives, Thebans, Lacedaemonians, Corinthians, Arcadians, ourselves. [53] But yet, though Greek politics are split up into so many factions under so many powers, in no state, if I must speak the truth freely, would you find the government offices and the council chambers less occupied with Greek affairs than here at Athens; and naturally so, for neither through love nor trust nor fear does anyone hold communication with us. [54] And this is not due to a single cause, Athenians, or you might easily remedy it, but to many errors of every kind throughout the past. Without enumerating these, I will mention one on which all the rest turn, only beseeching you not to be offended with me, if I speak the truth boldly. It is the selling of your interests at every opportunity; your share in the bargain is leisure and inaction, which charm you out of your resentment against your betrayers, but others reap the rewards. [55] The other errors it is not worth while to investigate now, but whenever any question arises that concerns Philip, instantly up jumps someone and says there must be no nonsense talked, no declarationtion of war, and he at once goes on to add how good a thing it is to preserve peace, and what a bother it is to keep up a large army, and how “certain persons want to plunder your wealth”11; and their other statements are as true as they can make them. [56] But surely it is not to you that they should recommend peace, for you have taken the advice and there you sit; it is to the man who is even now on the warpath; for if Philip can be won over, your share of the compact is ready to hand. Again, they should reflect that the irksome thing is not the expense of securing our safety, but the doom that will be ours if we shrink from that expense. As for the “plunder of your wealth,” they ought to prevent that by proposing some way of checking it and not by abandoning your interests. [57] And yet it is just this that rouses my indignation, that some of you should be distressed at the prospect of the plunder of your wealth, when you are quite competent to protect it and to punish any offender, but that you are not distressed at the sight of Philip thus plundering every Greek state in turn, the more so as he is plundering them to injure you. [58]

Why then, men of Athens, has none of these speakers ever admitted that Philip is violating rights and provoking war, when he is thus openly violating rights and subduing cities, but when others urge you not to give way to Philip nor submit to these losses, they say they are provoking war? It is because they want the blame for the sufferings that the war will entail—for it is inevitable, yes, inevitable that the war should cause much distress—to be laid at the doors of those who believe they are your wisest counsellors. [59] For they are convinced that if you offer a whole-hearted and unanimous opposition to Philip, you will beat him and they will have no further chance of earning his pay, but that if at the first alarm of war you throw the blame on certain persons and devote your energies to bringing them to trial, they themselves by accusing them will gain both their ends—reputation with you and money from him, while you will punish the men who have spoken in your interests for the faults which you ought to punish in their accusers. [60] Such are their hopes, and such is the design of the accusation that “certain persons wish to provoke war.” But I am absolutely certain that, without waiting for any Athenian to propose a declaration of war, Philip is in possession of much of our territory and has just dispatched a force against Cardia. If, however, we like to pretend that he is not at war with us, he would be the greatest fool alive if he tried to disprove that; for when the victims deny the wrong, what should the malefactor do? [61] But when our turn comes, what shall we say then? For of course he will deny that he is attacking us, just as he denied that he was attacking the men of Oreus, when his troops were already in their territory, or the Pheraeans before that, when he was actually assaulting their walls, or the Olynthians at the start, until he was inside their frontier with his army. Or shall we say, even at that hour, that those who bid us repel him are provoking war? If so, there is nothing left but slavery, for there is no other alternative. [62] Moreover, you have not the same interests at stake as some of the others, for it is not your subjection that Philip aims at; no, but your complete annihilation. For he is well assured that you will not consent to be slaves; or, if you consent, will never learn how to be slaves, for you are accustomed to rule others; but that you will be able, if you seize your chances, to cause him more trouble than all the rest of the world. For that reason he will not spare you, if he gets you in his power. [63]

Therefore you must needs bear in mind that this will be a life-and-death struggle, and the men who have sold themselves to Philip must be publicly cudgelled to death; for it is impossible, impossible to quell the foes without, until you have punished the foes within your gates, but if you let these stand as stumbling-blocks in your path, you must fail against the others. [64] What do you imagine is his motive in outraging you now—I think no other term describes his conduct—or why is it that, in deceiving the others, he at least confers benefits upon them, but in your case he is resorting to threats? For example, the Thessalians were beguiled by his generosity into their present state of servitude; no words can describe how he formerly deceived the miserable Olynthians by his gift of Potidaea and many other places; the Thebans he is now misleading, having handed over Boeotia to them and relieved them of a long and trying war. [65] So each of these states has reaped some benefit from him, but while some have already paid the price by their sufferings, the others have yet to suffer whatever shall fall to their lot. As for you, I do not say how far you have been robbed, but in the actual making of the peace, how completely you were deceived, how grievously you were robbed! Were you not deceived about Phocis, Thermopylae, the Thrace-ward districts, Doriscus, Serrium, Cersobleptes himself? Is not Philip now holding the city of the Cardians, and admitting that he holds it? [66] Why then does he deal in that way with the other Greeks, but with you in this way? Because yours is the one city in the world where immunity is granted to plead on behalf of our enemies, and where a man who has been bribed can safely address you in person, even when you have been robbed of your own. It would not have been safe in Olynthus to plead Philip's cause, unless the Olynthian democracy had shared in the enjoyment of the revenues of Potidaea. [67] It would not have been safe in Thessaly to plead Philip's cause, if the commoners of Thessaly had not shared in the advantages that Philip conferred, when he expelled their tyrants and restored to them their Amphictyonic privileges. It would not have been safe at Thebes, until he gave them back Boeotia and wiped out the Phocians. [68] But at Athens, though Philip has not only robbed you of Amphipolis and the Cardian territory, but is also turning Euboea into a fortress to overawe us and is even now on his way to attack Byzantium, it is safe to speak on Philip's behalf. Indeed, of these politicians, some who were beggars are suddenly growing rich, some unknown to name and fame are now men of honour and distinction; while you, on the contrary, have passed from honour to dishonour, from affluence to destitution. [69] For a city's wealth I hold to be allies, credit, goodwill, and of all these you are destitute. And it is because you are indifferent to these things and allow them to be taken from you in this way, that Philip is prosperous and powerful and formidable to Greeks and barbarians alike, while you are deserted and humiliated, famous for your well-stocked markets, but in provision for your proper needs, contemptible. [70]

Yet I observe that some of our speakers do not urge the same policy for you as for themselves; for you, they say, ought to remain quiet even when you are wronged; themselves cannot remain quiet among you, though no one does them wrong. And yet, raillery apart, suppose someone should ask, “Tell me, Aristomedes,12 why, when you know perfectly well—for no one is ignorant of such matters—that a private station is secure and free from risk, but the life of a politician is precarious, open to attack, and full of trials and misfortunes every day, why do you not choose the quiet, sequestered life instead of the life of peril?” What would you reply? [71] For if we should grant the truth of what would be your best possible answer, that you do all this for love of glory and renown, I wonder what earthly reason you have for thinking that you yourself ought for that object to make every exertion, facing toil and danger, whereas you advise the State to abandon such efforts in sheer indifference. For this you cannot say—that it is your duty to make a figure in the State, but that the State is of no importance in the Greek world. [72] And there is another thing I do not see—that it is safe for the State to mind its own business, but dangerous for you if you do not go beyond your fellow-citizens in meddling with affairs. [73] Nay, on the contrary, I do foresee the utmost danger, to you from your bustling and meddling, but to the State from its inactivity. But you may say that you have the honour of your grandfather and father to uphold, and it would be scandalous to subvert it in your person, but that the State has inherited only nameless and paltry exploits from our ancestors. But that too is untrue; for you had a thief for your father, if he was like you, but our fathers, as all the Greeks know, preserved them from the deadliest perils. [74] But indeed there are some whose management both of private and of public business is neither fair nor constitutional; for how is it fair that some of these men, just released from jail, should be ignorant of their own worth, while that state, which was once the champion of the rest and maintained the pre-eminence, should now be sunk in all dishonour and humiliation? [75]

Therefore, though there is much that I could say on many topics, I will forbear; for indeed it is not, I think, lack of speeches either now or at any other time that is the cause of our distress, but when you have listened to the right sort of arguments, and when you are unanimous as to their validity, you sit on and give equal attention to those who wish to overthrow and distort them. It is not that you do not recognize these speakers, for as soon as you have seen them, you know exactly who is speaking for pay and acting as Philip's agent, and who is sincerely defending your best interests; but your aim is to find fault with these latter and, by turning the subject into ridicule and raillery, to avoid doing any part of your own duty. [76] There you have the truth spoken with all freedom, simply in goodwill and for the best—no speech packed by flattery with mischief and deceit, and intended to put money into the speaker's pocket and the control of the State into our enemies' hands. Either, then, you must abandon these habits of yours, or you must throw the blame for all our failures on no one but yourselves.

1 For the places named in this paragraph see especially Dem. 9.12, Dem. 9.15, Dem. 9.17, Dem. 9.27, Dem. 9.33.

2 To propose war on Philip would be dangerous to the speaker, as explained in the speech Dem. 8.68, and unnecessary, as Philip is already at war with Athens.

3 The word used is strong, but purposely vague. He would have incurred the inevitableγραφν̀ παραϝόμων.

4 The Thracians, thus honored for their services to Darius in his Scythian expedition. For the title cf. Hdt. 8.85 οἱ δ᾽ εὐργέται βασιλέος ὀροσάγγαι καλέονται Περσιστί. Such was the Mordecai, “the man whom the king delighted to honor,”Esther, c. 6.

5 If we may trust Ulpian, this was Hermeias of Atarneus, the friend of Aristotle, seized by the Rhodian Mentor and carried captive to the king of Persia. See Grote, c. 90.

6 The Persians helped Conon, when he defeated the Lacedaemonians off Cnidus in 394. In 345 Artaxerxes appealed to the leading Greek states for help in putting down the revolt of Egypt. Thebes and Argos sent auxiliaries, but Athens and Sparta refused.

7 See note on Dem. 1.20.

8 i.e. blame the poorer classes for upholding the Theoric Fund. The argument is that when revenue was smaller, the property-owners did not refuse to pay up; now that the revenue shows a big surplus, devoted to the Theoric Fund, in which all classes have a share, why should the rich demand relief from their “liturgies”? （Perhaps the modern income-tax-payer will fail to appreciate the speaker's logic.）

9 Children who refused to support their parents were liable to aδίκη κακώσεως.

10 The recognized appropriation of public money for the Theoric Fund is imitated by demagogues, who prosecute the rich in order that their fines and confiscations may be used for similar benefits. The demagogue thus acquires undue influence and, being privileged, is unassailable. Meanwhile the people, sitting as a jury, applaud the rich man when he skilfully defends his rights, but cast their votes against him.

11 i.e. by diverting money from the Theoric Fund to military objects.

12 An unknown opponent. If with Dindorf we adopt the vulgate, it will refer to the Athenian actor Aristodemus, who was a member of the first embassy to Philip and is mentioned in Dem. 18.21 and in several passages of Dem. 19