On Halonnesus

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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,

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?

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.[*](Agreements between two Greek states, laying down the conditions under which their nationals might mutually obtain legal redress, were called σύμβολα. 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.) 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.

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;

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,

though intercourse between the two nations was more frequent then than now. For Macedonia was under our sway and tributary to us,[*](The speaker is improving on the claim made by Demosthenes in Dem. 3.24. Macedonia was never really subject or tributary to Athens.) and we used each other’s markets more freely then than at present, and mercantile suits[*](Also called ἔμμηνοι 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.) were not then, as now, settled strictly every month, making a formal compact between such distant parties unnecessary.

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.

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,

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.