Olynthiac 1

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.

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.

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.

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.[*](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.) 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.