Olynthiac 2

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.

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.

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.[*](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).) 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.

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.

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.