Olynthiac 2

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.