On the Chersonese

So those who denounce him to you are simply warning everybody not to grant him a penny, because he will be punished for what he intends to do, apart from what he has done or what he has acquired for himself. That is what they mean when they cry, He intends to besiege the towns! He is betraying the Greeks! Do any of these gentlemen really care about the Asiatic Greeks?—and yet they would, I expect, be better champions of other countries than of their own.

That, too, is the meaning of the dispatch of a second general to the Hellespont. For if Diopithes is acting outrageously in detaining the merchantmen, a note, men of Athens, a brief note, could put a stop to all this at once; and there are the laws, which direct us to impeach such offenders, but not, of course, to mount guard over ourselves,[*](i.e. to keep a jealous watch over our own officers.) at such a cost and with so large a fleet; for that would be the height of madness.

No, against our enemies, who are not amenable to the laws, it is right and necessary to maintain troops, to send out fleets, and to raise funds; but against ourselves we have these resources, a decree, an impeachment, and a dispatch-boat. Those are what right-minded citizens would employ; malignants, bent on the ruin of the State, would do as these men are doing.

And that there are some men of this type among you, though bad enough, is not the real evil; but you who sit here are by now in such a mood that if anyone comes forward and asserts that the cause of all our evil is Diopithes or Chares or Aristophon, or any other citizen that he happens to name, you at once agree and applaud the truth of the remark.

But if anyone rises and tells you the real truth and says, Nonsense, Athenians! The cause of all these evils and all these troubles is Philip, for if he had kept quiet, our city would have been free from trouble, you cannot gainsay it, but you seem to me to be vexed and to feel that you are, as it were, losing something.

But as to the reason for this—and in Heaven’s name, when I am pleading for your best interests, allow me to speak freely—some of our politicians have been training you to be threatening and intractable in the meetings of the Assembly, but in preparing for war, careless and contemptible. If, then, the culprit named is someone on whom you know you can lay hands in Athens, you agree and assent; but if it is someone whom you cannot chastise unless you overcome him by force of arms, you find yourselves helpless, I suppose, and to be proved so causes you annoyance.

For it ought to have been the reverse, men of Athens; all your politicians should have trained you to be gentle and humane in the Assembly, for there you are dealing with rights that concern yourselves and your allies, but in preparing for war they should have made you threatening and intractable, because there you are pitted against your enemies and rivals.

As it is, by persuasive arts and caresses they have brought you to such a frame of mind that in your assemblies you are elated by their flattery and have no ear but for compliments, while in your policy and your practice you are at this moment running the gravest risks. For tell me, in Heaven’s name, if the Greeks should call you to account for the opportunities that your carelessness has already thrown away,

and should question you thus: Men of Athens, do you send us embassies on every occasion to explain how Philip is plotting against us and all the other Greeks, and how we must be on our guard against that man, and all that sort of thing?—(we are bound to admit it and plead guilty, for that is just what we do)—And yet, you most futile of mortals, when that man has been out of sight[*](As in Dem. 8.2, he alludes to Philip’s absence on his Thracian campaign.) for ten months, cut off from all chance of returning home by disease, by winter, and by war,

have you neither liberated Euboea nor regained any of your lost possessions? On the other hand, while you stay at home, at leisure and in health—(if indeed they could say that men who behave thus are in health)—Philip has set up two despots in Euboea, entrenching one right over against Attica and the other as a menace to Sciathus;

but you—have you never cleared away these obstacles, even if you had no further ambitions, and have you tamely submitted? Undoubtedly you have stood aside from his path and made it abundantly clear that, were he to die ten times over, you at least will make no further move. Then why do you pester us with your embassies and your complaints? If these are their words, what are we to say, Athenians? How are we to answer? For my part, I cannot tell.

Now there are some who think they confute a speaker the moment they ask, What then ought we to do? To these I will give the fairest and truest answer: not what you are doing now. I will not, however, shrink from going carefully into details; only they must be as willing to act as they are eager to question.

First, men of Athens, you must fix this firmly in your minds, that Philip is at war with us and has broken the peace. Yes, let there be no more wrangling over that question. He is ill-disposed and hostile to the whole city and to the very soil on which the city stands,

and, I will add, to every man in the city, even to those who imagine that they stand highest in his good graces. If they doubt it, let them look at Euthycrates and Lasthenes, the Olynthians, who thought they were such bosom-friends of his, and then, when they had betrayed their city, met the most ignominious fate of all. The chief object, however, of his arms and his diplomacy is our free constitution; on nothing in the world is he more bent than on its destruction.

And it is in a way natural that he should act thus. For he knows for certain that even if he masters all else, his power will be precarious as long as you remain a democracy; but if ever he meets with one of the many mischances to which mankind is liable, all the forces that are now under restraint will be attracted to your side.

For nature has not equipped you to seek aggrandizement and secure empire, but you are clever at thwarting another’s designs and wresting from him his gains, and quick to confound the plots of the ambitious and to vindicate the freedom of all mankind. Therefore he does not want to have the Athenian tradition of liberty watching to seize every chance against himself. Far from it! Nor is his reasoning here either faulty or idle.

This, then, is the first thing needful, to recognize in Philip the inveterate enemy of constitutional government and democracy, for unless you are heartily persuaded of this, you will not consent to take your politics seriously. Your second need is to convince yourselves that all his activity and all his organization is preparing the way for an attack on our city, and that where any resistance is offered to him, that resistance is our gain.