On the Chersonese

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;