On the False Embassy

that a democracy is the most unstable and capricious thing in the world, like a restless wave of the sea ruffled by the breeze as chance will have it. One man comes, another goes; no one attends to, or even remembers, the common weal. Philip, they said, ought to have friends at Athens, who would manage his business for him as it arose, and carry it through—the person speaking, for example; if that provision were made, he would easily accomplish here whatever he desired.

Now if he had heard that the persons who talked like that to him had been cudgelled to death immediately after their return home, I fancy he would have done what the King of Persia did. You remember what that was: the King had been inveigled by Timagoras, and had made him a present, as the story goes, of forty talents; but when he heard that the man had been put to death at Athens, and had not been competent to warrant his own life, much less to fulfil his undertaking, he realized that he had not paid the price to the man who could deliver the goods. The first result was that he again placed in subjection to you the city of Amphipolis, which he had put on his own list of friends and allies; and the second, that he nevermore gave money to anybody.