On the False Embassy

Holy Mother Earth! if I am to speak as a sane man, we stand in need of the utmost vigilance, when this infection, moving in its circuit, has invaded our own city. Therefore take your precautions now, while we are still secure. Let the men who have brought it here be punished with infamy. If not, beware lest you discern the wisdom of my words too late, when you have lost the power of doing what you ought.

Do you not see, men of Athens, what a conspicuous and striking example is offered by those miserable Olynthians, who owe their rain, unhappy men, to nothing so much as to such conduct as I have described? You may easily discover the truth by a review of their experience. At the time when their cavalry was only four hundred strong, and their whole force numbered no more than five thousand, for there was then no coalition of all the Chalcidians,