On the Chersonese

Because you are indifferent to these advantages and allow them to be taken from you, Philip is prosperous and powerful and formidable to Greeks and barbarians alike, while you are deserted and humiliated, famous for your well-stocked markets, but in provision for your proper needs, contemptible. Yet I observe that some of our speakers do not urge the same policy for you as for themselves; for you, they say, ought to remain quiet even when you are wronged; they themselves cannot remain quiet among you, though no man does them wrong.[*](They want you to remain passive, though they themselves lead an active political life, in Philip’s interests. See the expansion of this passage in Dem. 10.70-74.)

Then some irresponsible person comes forward and says, Of course, you decline to make a definite proposal or to run any such risk. You are a coward and a milksop. I am not foolhardy, impudent, and shameless, and I pray that I may never be; nevertheless I think myself more truly brave than many of your neck-or-nothing politicians.