On the Peace

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.

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.

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.

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.

For in the first place, Athenians, when it was proposed to take advantage of the unrest in Euboea[*](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.) 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 indignities[*](According to the Scholiast, Plutarchus seized some of the Athenian troops and compelled Athens to ransom them for 50 talents.) 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.

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.

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.

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.

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,

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.

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 cleverness[*](The Greek here is difficult. Most edd. awkwardly render ἀλαζονεία [cause for] boasting: it is rather political quackery passing muster for real statesmanship.); 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.

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.

Now there is one precaution which I think essential. If anyone proposes to negotiate for our city an alliance or a joint contribution[*](A euphemism under the second Athenian confederacy for the tribute (φόρος) of the first.) 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.

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—

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.

If we went to war again with the Thebans about Oropus[*](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.) 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.

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.

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;

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.

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.