[_Introduction_. Dionysius of Halicarnassus places the speech in 351
B.C. He is not always accurate, and the internal evidence has been
thought by some to suggest a date perhaps two years earlier. The
reasons, however, for this are not strong, and there has recently been
a disposition to accept Dionysius' date.
As the result of the Social War, Chios, Cos, Rhodes, and Byzantium had
made themselves independent of Athens. They had been assisted by
Mausolus, King of Caria, a vassal of Persia. After the termination of
the war, a Carian garrison occupied Cos and Rhodes; the democratic
constitution of Rhodes was overthrown and the democratic party driven
into banishment, as the result of an oligarchic plot, which Mausolus
had fostered. In 353 Mausolus died, and was succeeded by Artemisia, his
sister and wife. The exiles appealed to Athens for restoration, and for
the liberation of Rhodes from the Carian domination. It is evident that
the feeling in Athens against the Rhodians was very strong, owing to
their part in the late war, for which the democratic party had been
responsible; and there was some fear of the possible consequences of
offending Artemisia and perhaps becoming involved in war with Persia.
Demosthenes, nevertheless, urges the people to assist them, and to
forget their misconduct. He appeals to the traditional policy of
Athens, as the saviour of the oppressed and protectress of democracies,
and warns them of the danger which would threaten Athens herself, if
the conversion of free constitutions into oligarchies were allowed to
go unchecked. He takes a different view from that of his opponents of
the probable attitude of Artemisia, and utters an impressive warning
against corrupt and unpatriotic statesmen, which foreshadows his more
vehement attacks in the orations against Philip.
The appeal was unsuccessful, for in the speech on the Peace (§ 25)
Demosthenes speaks of Cos and Rhodes as still subject to Caria.
The speech is more eloquent than the last, and more outspoken.
Political principles and ideals are enunciated with some confidence,
and illustrated by striking examples from history. But there also
appears for the first time that sense of the difficulty of rousing the
Athenians to action of any kind, which is so strongly expressed in
later speeches.]
{1} It is, I think, your duty, men of Athens, when you are deliberating
upon affairs of such importance, to grant freedom of speech to every
one of your advisers. And for my part, I have never yet felt any
difficulty in pointing out to you the best course; for I believe that,
broadly speaking, you all know from the first what this is. My
difficulty is to persuade you to act upon your knowledge. For when a
measure is approved and passed by you, it is as far from execution as
it was before you resolved upon it. {2} Well, you have to render thanks
to Heaven for this, among other favours--that those who went to war
with you not long ago, moved by their own insolent pride, now place
their own hopes of preservation in you alone. Well may we rejoice at
our present opportunity! For if your decision in regard to it is what
it should be, you will find yourselves meeting the calumnies of those
who are slandering this city with a practical and a glorious
refutation. {3} For the peoples of Chios, Byzantium, and Rhodes accused
us of entertaining designs against them; and on this ground they
combined against us in the recent war. But now it will be seen[n] that,
while Mausolus, who under the pretence of friendship towards Rhodes,
directed and instigated their efforts, in reality robbed the Rhodians
of their freedom; while their declared allies, Chios and Byzantium,
never came to aid them in their misfortunes; {4} you, of whom they were
afraid, and you alone, have been the authors of their salvation. And
because all the world will have seen this, you will cause the popular
party in every city to consider your friendship a guarantee of their
own safety; nor could you reap any greater blessing than the goodwill
which will thus be offered to you, spontaneously and without
misgivings, upon every hand.
{5} I notice, to my surprise, that those who urge us to oppose the king
in the interest of the Egyptians,[n] are the very persons who are so
afraid of him when it is the interest of the popular party in Rhodes
that is in question. And yet it is known to every one that the Rhodians
are Hellenes, while the Egyptians have a place assigned them in the
Persian Empire. {6} I expect that some of you remember that, when you
were discussing our relations with the king, I came forward and was the
first to advise you[n] (though I had, I believe, no supporters, or one
at the most), that you would show your good sense, in my opinion, if
you did not make your hostility to the king the pretext of your
preparations, but prepared yourselves against the enemies whom you
already had; though you would resist him also, if he attempted to do
you any injury. {7} Nor, when I spoke thus, did I fail to convince you,
but you also approved of this policy. What I have now to say is the
sequel to my argument on that occasion. For if the king were to call me
to his side and make me his counsellor, I should give him the same
advice as I gave you--namely, that he should fight in defence of his
own possessions, if he were opposed by any Hellenic power, but should
absolutely forego all claim to what in no way belongs to him. {8} If,
therefore, you have made a general resolve, men of Athens, to retire
from any place of which the king makes himself master, either by
surprise or by the deception of some of the inhabitants, you have not
resolved well, in my judgement: but if you are prepared, in defence of
your rights, even to fight, if need be, and to endure anything that may
be necessary, not only will the need for such a step be less, the more
firmly your minds are made up, but you will also be regarded as showing
the spirit which you ought to show.
{9} To prove to you that I am not suggesting anything unprecedented in
bidding you liberate the Rhodians, and that you will not be acting
without precedent, if you take my advice, I will remind you of one of
those incidents in the past which have ended happily for you. You once
sent out Timotheus, men of Athens, to assist Ariobarzanes,[n] adding to
your resolution the provision that he must not break our treaty with
the king; and Timotheus, seeing that Ariobarzanes was now openly in
revolt against the king, but that Samos was occupied by a garrison
under Cyprothemis, who had been placed there by Tigranes, the king's
viceroy, abandoned his intention of helping Ariobarzanes, but sat down
before Samos, relieved it, and set it free. {10} And to this day no war
has ever arisen to trouble you on account of this. For to enter upon a
war for the purpose of aggrandizement is never the same thing as to do
so in defence of one's own possessions. Every one fights his hardest to
recover what he has lost; but when men endeavour to gain at the expense
of others, it is not so. They desire to do this, if it is allowed them;
but if they are prevented, they do not consider that their opponents
have done them any wrong.
{11} Now listen for a moment, and consider whether I am right or wrong,
when I conclude that if Athens were actively at work, Artemisia herself
would now not even oppose our action. If the king effects in Egypt all
that he is bent upon, I believe that Artemisia would make every attempt
to secure for him the continued possession of Rhodes--not from any
goodwill towards him, but from the desire to be credited with a great
service to him, while he is still in her neighbourhood,[n] and so to
win from him as friendly a reception as possible. {12} But if he is
faring as we are told, if all his attempts have failed, she will
consider, and rightly, that the island can be of no further use to the
king, except as a fortified post to command her own dominions--a
security against any movement on her part. Accordingly she would
prefer, I believe, that you should have it, without her openly
surrendering it to you, rather than that he should occupy it. I think,
therefore, that she would not even make an attempt to save it; or that
if she actually did so, it would be but weakly and ineffectively. {13}
For although I cannot, of course, profess to know what the king will
do, I must insist that it is high time that it should be made clear, in
the interests of Athens, whether he intends to lay claim to Rhodes or
not: for if he does so, we have then to take counsel, not for the
Rhodians alone, but for ourselves and for the Hellenes as a whole.
{14} At the same time, even if the Rhodians who are now in
possession[n] of the town held it by their own strength, I should never
have urged you to take them for your allies, for all the promises in
the world. For I observe that they took to their side some of their
fellow citizens, to help them overthrow the democracy, and that, having
done this, they turned and expelled them: and I do not think that men
who failed to keep faith with either party would ever be trustworthy
allies for yourselves. {15} And further, I should never have made my
present proposal, had I been thinking only of the interests of the
popular party in Rhodes. I am not their official patron,[n] nor have I
a single personal friend among them; and even if both these things were
otherwise, I should not have made this proposal, had I not believed it
to be for your advantage. For as for the Rhodians, if I may use such an
expression when I am pleading with you to save them, I share your
joy[1] at what has happened to them. For it is because they grudged you
the recovery of your rights that they have lost their own freedom; and
that, instead of the equal alliance which they might have had with
Hellenes, better than themselves, they are in bondage to foreigners and
slaves, whom they have admitted to their citadels. {16} Indeed, if you
resolve to go to their aid, I may almost say that this calamity has
been good for them; for, Rhodians as they are, I doubt if they would
ever have come to their right mind in prosperity; whereas actual
experience has now taught them that folly generally leads to manifold
adversities; and perhaps they will be wiser for the future. This
lesson, I feel sure, will be no small advantage to them. I say then
that you should endeavour to save these men, and should bear no malice,
remembering that you too have been greatly deceived by conspirators
against you, and yet would not admit that you deserved yourselves to
suffer for such mistakes.
Observe this also, men of Athens. {17} You have waged many wars both
against democracies and against oligarchies; and of this no doubt you
are as well aware as I. But I doubt whether any of you considers for
what objects you are fighting in each case. What then are these
objects? In fighting against a democracy, you are fighting either over
some private quarrel, when the parties have failed to settle their
disputes by the means publicly provided;[n] or you are contending for a
piece of territory, or about a boundary, or for a point of honour, or
for paramountcy. But in fighting against an oligarchy, it is not for
any such objects--it is your constitution and your freedom that are at
stake. {18} And therefore I should not hesitate to say that I believe
it would be better for you, that all the Hellenic peoples should be
democracies, and be at war with you, than that they should be governed
by oligarchies, and be your friends. For with a free people you would
have no difficulty, I believe, in making peace whenever you desired:
but with an oligarchical State friendship itself cannot be safe. For
there can be no goodwill between Few and Many--between those who seek
for mastery, and those who have chosen the life of political equality.
{19} It surprises me also that though Chios and Mytilene are ruled by
oligarchies, and though now the Rhodians and all mankind, I may almost
say, are being brought into the same bondage, no one considers that any
danger threatens our own constitution also, or reflects that if every
State is organized upon an oligarchic basis, it is not possible that
your own democracy should be suffered to remain. For they know that no
people but you could ever bring them forth into a state of liberty
again; and they will wish to put an end to so likely a source of
trouble to themselves. {20} As a rule we may regard wrongdoers as
enemies only to those whom they have wronged. But when men destroy free
constitutions and convert them into oligarchies, I say that you must
think of them as the common enemies of all whose hearts are set on
freedom. {21} Again, men of Athens, it is only right that you, a
democracy yourselves, should show towards other democracies in distress
the same spirit as you would expect them to show towards you, if any
such calamity (which God forbid!) should happen to you. It may be said
that the Rhodians are justly punished. If so, this is not the time to
exult over them. When men are prosperous they should always be found
taking thought how best to help the distressed; for the future is
unknown to all men.
{22} I have often heard it stated here in your presence, that when our
democracy had met with disaster,[n] you were joined by certain others
in your anxiety for its preservation. Of these I will only refer on the
present occasion to the Argives, and that briefly. For I cannot desire
that you, who enjoy the reputation of being always the saviours of the
distressed, should prove inferior to the Argives in that work. These
Argives, though their territory borders on that of the Spartans, whom
they saw to be masters by land and sea, neither hesitated nor feared to
display their goodwill towards you; but when envoys came from Sparta
(so the story goes) to demand the persons of certain Athenian refugees,
they even voted that unless the envoys departed before sunset, they
should be adjudged public enemies. {23} If then the democracy of Argos
in those days showed no fear of the might of the Spartan Empire, will
it not be a disgrace if you, who are Athenians, are afraid of one who
is a barbarian--aye, and a woman?[n] The Argives, moreover, could point
to many defeats sustained at the hands of Sparta, while you have often
defeated the king, and have not once proved inferior either to his
servants or to himself. For if ever the king has gained any success
against Athens, it has been by bribing the basest of the Hellenes to
betray their countrymen; in no other way has he ever succeeded. {24}
Indeed, even such success has done him no good. You will find that no
sooner had he rendered Athens weak,[n] by the help of the Spartans,
than he had to fight for his own kingdom against Clearchus and Cyrus.
His successes, therefore, have not been won in the open field, nor have
his plots brought him any good. Now some of you, I notice, are in the
habit of speaking contemptuously of Philip, as though he were not worth
reckoning with; while you dread the king, as a powerful enemy to any
whom he chooses to oppose. But if we are not to defend ourselves
against Philip, because he is so mean a foe, and are to give way in
everything to the king, because he is so formidable, who is there, men
of Athens, against whom we shall ever take the field?
{25} Men of Athens, you have among you those who are particularly
skilful in pleading with you the rights of the rest of the world; and I
should be glad to give them this single piece of advice--that they
should seek to plead your rights with the rest of the world,[n] and so
set an example of duty. It is monstrous to instruct you about rights,
without doing right oneself; and it is not right that a fellow citizen
of yours should have studied all the arguments against you and none of
those in your favour. {26} Ask yourselves, in God's name, why it is
that there is no one in Byzantium to tell the Byzantines that they must
not occupy Chalcedon,[n] which belongs to the king and formerly
belonged to you, but upon which they had no sort of claim; or that they
must not make Selymbria, once your ally, a contributory portion of the
Byzantine state; or include the territory of Selymbria[n] within the
Byzantine frontier, in defiance of the sworn treaty which ordains the
independence of the cities? {27} Why was there no one to tell Mausolus,
while he lived, and Artemisia after his death, that they must not
occupy Cos and Rhodes and other Hellenic cities as well, which the king
their master ceded to the Hellenes by the treaty,[n] and for the sake
of which the Hellenes of those days faced many a peril and fought many
a gallant fight? Even if there actually are such advisers[n] in both
cases, at least it is not likely that they will find listeners. {28}
For my part I believe that it is right to restore the exiled democracy
of Rhodes. But even if it were not right, I think it would be proper to
urge you to do it, when I consider the course taken by such speakers as
these; and for this reason. If all the world, men of Athens, were bent
upon doing right, it would be a disgrace to us if we alone were
unwilling to do so: but when all the world is preparing itself in order
to be able to commit wrong, then for us alone to abstain from every
enterprise, on the plea of right, is no righteousness, to my mind, but
cowardice. For I observe that the extent to which rights are admitted
is always in proportion to the claimant's power at the moment. {29} I
can illustrate this by an instance familiar to all of you. There are
two treaties[n] between the Hellenes and the king. The first was made
by our own city, and all men praise it; the second by the Spartans, and
it is denounced by all. The rights defined in these two treaties are
not the same. For whereas a common and equal share of private rights is
given by law to weak and strong alike, in a settlement of international
rights it is the stronger who legislate for the weaker.
Well, you already know what the right course is.[n] {30} It remains to
inquire how you can carry out your knowledge into action; and this will
be possible, if you come to be regarded as public champions of
universal liberty. But the great difficulty which you find in doing
your duty is, to my mind, natural enough. All other men have only one
conflict to face--the conflict with their declared foes; and when these
are subdued, there is no further obstacle to their secure enjoyment of
their happiness. {31} But for you there is a double conflict. In
addition to that to which all men are liable, there is another which is
harder, and which must be faced first: for you have to win the victory
in your councils over those who are deliberately working in your midst
against the interests of the city; and because, thanks to them, you can
effect nothing that is demanded of you without a struggle, it is
natural that you should often miss your mark. {32} The chief reason for
the fearless adoption of such a course in public life by so many men is
perhaps to be found in the benefits which they obtain from those who
hire them. Yet at the same time, some of the blame may fairly be laid
at your own doors. For you ought, men of Athens, to think of a man's
post in public life as you think of his post in the army in the field.
And how do you think of this? If a man leaves the post assigned to him
by his general, you think that he deserves to be disfranchised and to
lose all share in the privileges of a citizen. {33} And so when men
desert the post of civil duty, committed to them by our forefathers,
and follow an oligarchical[n] policy, they should forfeit the privilege
of acting as advisers to yourselves. As it is, while you believe that
those of your allies are best disposed towards you, who have sworn to
have the same friends and foes as yourselves, the politicians in whom
you place most faith are those whom you well know to have chosen the
side of the enemies of Athens.
{34} It is easy enough, however, to find reasons for accusing them and
reproaching all of you. But to find words or actions which will enable
us to rectify what is now amiss with us, is a task indeed. Moreover,
the present is not, perhaps, the time for entering into every point:
but if only you can confirm the policy which you have chosen by some
suitable action, it may be that other conditions will each in turn show
some improvement. {35} I think, therefore, that you ought to take this
enterprise in hand with vigour, and to act worthily of your country.
Remember with what delight you listen to the praises of your
forefathers,[n] the recital of their deeds, the enumeration of their
trophies. Consider then that your forefathers dedicated these trophies,
not that you might gaze at them in idle wonder, but that you might
imitate the actions of those who placed them there.