Philippic 4

For a city’s wealth I hold to be allies, credit, goodwill, and of all these you are destitute. And it is because you are indifferent to these things and allow them to be taken from you in this way, that 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; themselves cannot remain quiet among you, though no one does them wrong. And yet, raillery apart, suppose someone should ask, Tell me, Aristomedes,[*](An unknown opponent. If with Dindorf we adopt the vulgate, it will refer to the Athenian actor Aristodemus, who was a member of the first embassy to Philip and is mentioned in Dem. 18.21 and in several passages of Dem. 19) why, when you know perfectly well—for no one is ignorant of such matters—that a private station is secure and free from risk, but the life of a politician is precarious, open to attack, and full of trials and misfortunes every day, why do you not choose the quiet, sequestered life instead of the life of peril? What would you reply?

For if we should grant the truth of what would be your best possible answer, that you do all this for love of glory and renown, I wonder what earthly reason you have for thinking that you yourself ought for that object to make every exertion, facing toil and danger, whereas you advise the State to abandon such efforts in sheer indifference. For this you cannot say—that it is your duty to make a figure in the State, but that the State is of no importance in the Greek world.

And there is another thing I do not see—that it is safe for the State to mind its own business, but dangerous for you if you do not go beyond your fellow-citizens in meddling with affairs.