Philippic 4

Nay, on the contrary, I do foresee the utmost danger, to you from your bustling and meddling, but to the State from its inactivity. But you may say that you have the honour of your grandfather and father to uphold, and it would be scandalous to subvert it in your person, but that the State has inherited only nameless and paltry exploits from our ancestors. But that too is untrue; for you had a thief for your father, if he was like you, but our fathers, as all the Greeks know, preserved them from the deadliest perils.

But indeed there are some whose management both of private and of public business is neither fair nor constitutional; for how is it fair that some of these men, just released from jail, should be ignorant of their own worth, while that state, which was once the champion of the rest and maintained the pre-eminence, should now be sunk in all dishonour and humiliation?

Therefore, though there is much that I could say on many topics, I will forbear; for indeed it is not, I think, lack of speeches either now or at any other time that is the cause of our distress, but when you have listened to the right sort of arguments, and when you are unanimous as to their validity, you sit on and give equal attention to those who wish to overthrow and distort them. It is not that you do not recognize these speakers, for as soon as you have seen them, you know exactly who is speaking for pay and acting as Philip’s agent, and who is sincerely defending your best interests; but your aim is to find fault with these latter and, by turning the subject into ridicule and raillery, to avoid doing any part of your own duty.

There you have the truth spoken with all freedom, simply in goodwill and for the best—no speech packed by flattery with mischief and deceit, and intended to put money into the speaker’s pocket and the control of the State into our enemies’ hands. Either, then, you must abandon these habits of yours, or you must throw the blame for all our failures on no one but yourselves.