Ways and Means

If it seems clear that the state cannot obtain a full revenue from all sources unless she has peace, is it not worth while to set up a board of guardians of peace? Were such a board constituted, it would help to increase the popularity of the city and to make it more attractive and more densely thronged with visitors from all parts.

If any are inclined to think that a lasting peace for our city will involve a loss of her power and glory and fame in Greece, they too, in my opinion, are out in their calculations. For I presume that those states are reckoned the happiest that enjoy the longest period of unbroken peace; and of all states Athens is by nature most suited to flourish in peace.

For if the state is tranquil, what class of men will not need her? Shipowners and merchants will head the list. Then there will be those rich in corn and wine and oil and cattle; men possessed of brains and money to invest; craftsmen and professors and

philosophers; poets and the people who make use of their works; those to whom anything sacred or secular appeals that is worth seeing or hearing. Besides, where will those who want to buy or sell many things quickly meet with better success in their efforts than at Athens?

No one, I dare say, contests this; but there are some who wish the state to recover her ascendancy, and they may think that it is more likely to be won by war than by peace. Let such, in the first place, call to mind the Persian Wars. Was it by coercing the Greeks or by rendering services to them that we became leaders of the fleet and treasurers of the league funds?

Further, after the state had been stripped of her empire through seeming to exercise her authority with excessive harshness, did not the islanders even then restore to us the presidency of the fleet by their own free will, when we refrained from acts of injustice?

And again, did not the Thebans place themselves under the leadership of the Athenians in return for our good offices? Yet once again, it was not the effect of coercion on our part, but of generous treatment, that the Lacedaemonians permitted the Athenians to arrange the leadership as they chose.

And now, owing to the confusion prevalent in Greece, an opportunity, I think, has fallen to the state to win back the Greeks without trouble, without danger, and without expense. For she has it in her power to try to reconcile the warring states, she has it in her power to compose the factions contending in their midst.

And were it apparent that you are striving to make the Delphic shrine independent, as it used to be, not by joining in war, but by sending embassies up and down Greece, I for my part should not be in the least surprised if you found the Greeks all of one mind, banded together by oath and united in alliance against any that attempted to seize the shrine in the event of the Phocians abandoning it.

Were you to show also that you are striving for peace in every land and on every sea, I do think that, next to the safety of their own country, all men would put the safety of Athens first in their prayers.

If, on the other hand, any one supposes that financially war is more profitable to the state than peace, I really do not know how the truth of this can be tested better than by considering once more what has been the experience of our state in the past.

He will find that in old days a very great amount of money was paid into the treasury in time of peace, and that the whole of it was spent in time of war; he will conclude on consideration that in our own time the effect of the late war on our revenues was that many of them ceased, while those that came in were exhausted by the multitude of expenses; whereas the cessation of war by sea has been followed by a rise in the revenues, and has allowed the citizens to devote them to any purpose they choose.

But some one may ask me, Do you mean to say that, even if she is wronged, the state should remain at peace with the offender? No, certainly not; but I do say that our vengeance would follow far more swiftly on our enemies if we provoked nobody by wrong-doing; for then they would look in vain for an ally.