On the Treaty with Alexander

Is it not, then, absurd that others should be guilty of so many serious transgressions, but that their friends in Athens, instead of restraining the transgressors, should urge us to abide by the terms thus lightly regarded? As if there were a clause added, permitting some to violate them, but forbidding others even to defend their rights.

But was not the conduct of the Macedonians as stupid as it was lawless, when they committed such a gross violation of their oaths as deservedly went near to cost them their right to command at sea?[*](The Congress gave Alexander the command of the Greek forces on sea as well as on land. If the Macedonians provoked the Athenians, who provided the greater part of a united Greek fleet, he might lose this command.) Even as it is, they have supplied us with this unquestionable claim against them, whenever we choose to press it. For surely their violation of the joint agreement is not lessened because they have now ceased to offend.

But they are in luck, because they can make the most of your supineness, which prefers to take no advantage even of your due rights.

The greatest humiliation, however, that we have suffered is that all the other Greeks and barbarians dread your enmity, but these upstarts[*](Literally nouveaux riches, another word condemned by Libanius as un-Demosthenic.) alone can make you despise yourselves, sometimes by persuasion, sometimes by force, as if Abdera or Maronea,[*](Two cities of Thrace. The former was the Greek Gotham.) and not Athens, were the scene of their political activities.

Moreover, while they weaken your cause and strengthen that of your enemies, they at the same time admit unconsciously that our city is irresistible, because they bid her uphold justice by injustice, as though she could easily vanquish her enemies, if she preferred to consult her own interests.[*](The disloyal politicians wish to put Athens at a disadvantage by urging her to keep the compact justly while allowing the Macedonians to break it unjustly. Now if Athens can afford to do this and yet keep her position, it proves that she could easily beat her enemies if she concentrated on her own interests.)

And they have taken up a reasonable attitude; for as long as we, single-handed, can maintain an unchallenged supremacy at sea, we can devise other and stronger defences on land in addition to our existing forces, especially if by good fortune we can get rid of these politicians, who have for their bodyguard the hosts of tyranny, and if some of them are destroyed and others conclusively proved to be worthless.

Such then, in the matter of the ships, has been the violation of the compact by the Macedonian king, in addition to the other cases mentioned. But the most insolent and overbearing exploit of the Macedonians was that performed quite recently, when they dared to sail into the Piraeus, contrary to our mutual agreement. Moreover, men of Athens, because it was only a single war-galley, it must not be regarded as a slight matter, but as an experiment made to see whether we should overlook it, so that they could repeat it on a larger scale, and also as a proof that they cared as little for these terms of agreement as for those that have been already mentioned.

For that it was an encroachment little by little and was meant to accustom us to suffering such intrusions into our harbors, is plain from the following consideration. For the mere fact that the man who sailed the ship in, and whom you ought to have put out of existence at once, galley and all, asked permission to build small boats in our harbor—does it not make it perfectly plain that their scheme was not so much to enter the harbor as to be inside it from the first? And if we tolerate small craft, a little later it will be war-galleys as well; and if at first we sanction a few, there will soon be many.

For they cannot allege as their excuse that there is plenty of timber for shipbuilding at Athens, where we import it with great trouble from distant parts, but that it is scarce in Macedonia, where there is a cheap supply for all who want it. No, they thought that they would build their ships here and also furnish them with crews in our harbor, though it is expressly stipulated in the joint agreement that nothing of the kind should be permitted; and they thought too that it would always be more and more in their power to do this. Thus on every hand they treat our city with contempt, thanks to their prompters here, who suggest to them everything they should do.

and thus with their help they have discovered that there is an indescribable slackness and feebleness in our city, and that we take no thought for the morrow, and that it never occurs to us to consider how the tyrant is carrying out the joint agreement.

That agreement, men of Athens, I urge you to keep in the way that I have explained, and I would confidently assure you, with the authority that my age[*](Demosthenes would be about fifty at the probable date of this speech.) confers, that we shall at once be exercising our undoubted rights, and also making the safest use of those opportunities which impel us to secure our interests. For, indeed, there is this clause appended to the agreement, if it is our wish to share in the common peace. But the words if it is our wish mean also the opposite—if it is ever our duty to abandon our disgraceful submission to the dictates of others, or even our forgetfulness of those high ideals, which from time immemorial we have cherished in greater measure than any other people.[*](This vague and clumsy sentence admits of no satisfactory interpretation. The ἀλλάof the Mss. conveys no meaning, and it will be noticed that παύσασθαιis apparently constructed both with a participle and with an infinitive. The Greek needs, but hardly deserves, emendation.) Therefore, if you approve, Athenians, I will now propose that, as the agreement directs, we declare war on the transgressors.