{1} Many as are the occasions, men of Athens, on which we may discern
the manifestation of the goodwill of Heaven towards this city, one of
the most striking is to be seen in the circumstances of the present
time. For that men should have been found to carry on war against
Philip; men whose territory borders on his and who possess some power;
men, above all, whose sentiments in regard to the war are such that
they think of the proposed compact with him, not only as untrustworthy,
but as the very ruin of their country--this seems to be certainly the
work of a superhuman, a divine, beneficence. {2} And so, men of Athens,
we must take care that we do not treat ourselves less well than
circumstances have treated us. For it is a shameful thing--nay, it is
the very depth of shame--to throw away openly, not only cities and
places which were once in our power, but even the allies and the
opportunities which have been provided for us by Fortune.
{3} Now to describe at length the power of Philip, men of Athens, and
to incite you to the performance of your duty by such a recital, is
not, I think, a satisfactory proceeding; and for this reason--that
while all that can be said on this subject tends to Philip's glory, it
is a story of failure on our part. For the greater the extent to which
his success surpasses his deserts, the greater is the admiration with
which the world regards him; while, for your part, the more you have
fallen short of the right use of your opportunities, the greater is the
disgrace that you have incurred. {4} I will therefore pass over such
considerations. For any honest inquirer must see that the causes of
Philip's rise to greatness lie in Athens, and not in himself. Of the
services for which he has to thank those whose policy is determined by
his interest--services for which you ought to require their
punishment--the present is not, I see, the moment to speak. But apart
from these, there are things which may be said, and which it is better
that you should all have heard--things which (if you will examine them
aright) constitute a grave reproach against him; and these I will try
to tell you.
{5} If I called him perjured and faithless, without giving his actions
in evidence, my words would be treated as idle abuse, and rightly: and
it happens that to review all his actions up to the present time, and
to prove the charge in every case, requires only a short speech. It is
well, I think, that the story should be told, for it will serve two
purposes; first, to make plain the real badness of the man's character;
and secondly, to let those who are over-alarmed at Philip, as if he
were invincible, see that he has come to the end of all those forms of
deceit by which he rose to greatness, and that his career is already
drawing to its close. {6} For I, too, men of Athens, should be
regarding Philip with intense fear and admiration, if I saw that his
rise was the result of a righteous policy. {7} But when I study and
consider the facts, I find that originally, when certain persons wished
to drive from your presence the Olynthians who desired to address you
from this place, Philip won over our innocent minds by saying that he
would deliver up Amphipolis to us, and by inventing the famous secret
understanding; that he afterwards conciliated the Olynthians by seizing
Poteidaea, which was yours, and injuring their former allies by handing
it over to themselves; and that, last of all, he recently won over the
Thessalians, by promising to give up Magnesia to them, and undertaking
to carry on the war with the Phocians on their behalf. There is
absolutely no one who has ever had dealings with him that he has not
deluded; and it is by deceiving and winning over, one after another,
those who in their blindness did not realize what he was, that he has
risen as he has done. {8} And therefore, just as it was by these
deceptions that he rose to greatness, in the days when each people
fancied that he intended to do some service to themselves; so it is
these same deceptions which should drag him down again, now that he
stands convicted of acting for his own ends throughout. Such, then, is
the crisis, men of Athens, to which Philip's fortunes have now come. If
it is not so, let any one come forward and show me (or rather you) that
what I say is untrue; or that those who have been deceived at the
outset trust him as regards the future; or that those who have been
brought into unmerited bondage would not gladly be free.
{9} But if any of you, while agreeing with me so far, still fancies
that Philip will maintain his hold by force, because he has already
occupied fortified posts and harbours and similar positions, he is
mistaken. When power is cemented by goodwill, and the interest of all
who join in a war is the same, then men are willing to share the
labour, to endure the misfortunes, and to stand fast. But when a man
has become strong, as Philip has done, by a grasping and wicked policy,
the first excuse, the least stumble, throws him from his seat and
dissolves the alliance. {10} It is impossible, men of Athens, utterly
impossible, to acquire power that will last, by unrighteousness, by
perjury, and by falsehood. Such power holds out for a moment, or for a
brief hour; it blossoms brightly, perhaps, with fair hopes; but time
detects the fraud, and the flower falls withered about its stem. In a
house or a ship, or any other structure, it is the foundations that
must be strongest; and no less, I believe, must the principles, which
are the foundation of men's actions, be those of truth and
righteousness. Such qualities are not to be seen to-day in the past
acts of Philip.
{11} I say, then, that we should help the Olynthians; and the best and
quickest method which can be proposed is the method which I approve.
Further, we should send an embassy to the Thessalians--to some, to
inform them of our intention; to others, to spur them on; for even now
they have resolved to demand the restitution of Pagasae, and to make
representations in regard to Magnesia. {12} Take care, however, men of
Athens, that our envoys may not only have words to speak, but also
actions of yours to point to. Let it be seen that you have gone forth
in a manner that is worthy of Athens, and are already in action. Words
without the reality must always appear a vain and empty thing, and
above all when they come from Athens; for the more we seem to excel in
the glib use of such language, the more it is distrusted by every one.
{13} The change, then, which is pointed out to them must be great, the
conversion striking. They must see you paying your contributions,
marching to war, doing everything with a will, if any of them is to
listen to you. And if you resolve to accomplish all this in very deed,
as it should be accomplished, not only will the feeble and
untrustworthy nature of Philip's alliances be seen, but the weakness of
his own empire and power will also be detected.
{14} The power and empire of Macedonia is, indeed, to speak generally,
an element which tells considerably as an addition to any other power.
You found it so when it helped you against the Olynthians in the days
of Timotheus;[n] the Olynthians in their turn found its help of some
value, in combination with their own strength, against Poteidaea; and
it has recently come to the aid of the Thessalians, in their disordered
and disturbed condition, against the ruling dynasty: and wherever even
a small addition is made to a force, it helps in every way. {15} But in
itself the Macedonian Empire is weak and full of manifold evils. Philip
has in fact rendered his own tenure of it even more precarious than it
naturally was, by these very wars and campaigns which might be supposed
to prove his power. For you must not imagine, men of Athens, that
Philip and his subjects delight in the same things. Philip has a
passion for glory--that is his ambition; and he has deliberately chosen
to risk the consequences of a life of action and danger, preferring the
glory of achieving more than any King of Macedonia before him to a life
of security. {16} But his subjects have no share in the honour and
glory. Constantly battered about by all these expeditions, up and down,
they are vexed with incessant hardships: they are not suffered to
pursue their occupations or attend to their own affairs: for the little
that they produce, as best they can, they can find no market, the
trading stations of the country being closed on account of the war.
{17} From these facts it is not difficult to discover the attitude of
the Macedonians in general towards Philip; and as for the mercenaries
and Infantry of the Guard who surround him, though they have the
reputation of being a fine body of well-drilled warriors, I am told by
a man who has been in Macedonia, and who is incapable of falsehood,
that they are no better than any other body of men. {18} Granted that
there may be experienced campaigners and fighters among them; yet, he
tells me, Philip is so jealous of honour, that he thrusts all such men
away from him, in his anxiety to get the credit of every achievement
for himself; for in addition to all his other qualities, his jealousy
is insurpassable. On the other hand, any generally temperate or upright
man, who cannot endure the dissolute life there, day by day, nor the
drunkenness and the lewd revels, is thrust on one side and counts for
nothing. {19} Thus he is left with brigands and flatterers, and men
who, when in their cups, indulge in dances of a kind which I shrink
from naming to you now. And it is evident that this report is true; for
men whom every one tried to drive out of Athens, as far viler than even
the very juggler in the street--Callias the public slave and men like
him, players of farces, composers of indecent songs, written at the
expense of their companions in the hope of raising a laugh--these are
the men he likes and keeps about him. {20} You may think that these are
trivial things, men of Athens: but they are weighty, in the judgement
of every right-minded man, as illustrations of the temper with which
Philip is cursed. At present, I suppose, these facts are overshadowed
by his continual prosperity. Success has a wonderful power of throwing
a veil over shameful things like these. But let him only stumble, and
then all these features in his character will be displayed in their
true light. And I believe, men of Athens, that the revelation is not
far off, if Heaven be willing and you desirous of it. {21} So long as a
man is in good health, he is unconscious of any weakness; but if any
illness comes upon him, the disturbance affects every weak point, be it
a rupture or a sprain or anything else that is unsound in his
constitution. And as with the body, so it is with a city or a tyrant.
So long as they are at war abroad, the mischief is hidden from the
world at large, but the close grapple of war on the frontier brings all
to light.
{22} Now if any of you, men of Athens, seeing Philip's good fortune,
thinks that this makes him a formidable enemy to fight against, he
reasons like a sensible man: for fortune weighs heavily in the
scale--nay, fortune is everything, in all human affairs. And yet, if I
were given the choice, it is the fortune of Athens that I should
choose, rather than that of Philip, provided that you yourselves are
willing to act even to a small extent as you should act. For I see that
there are far more abundant grounds for expecting the goodwill of
Heaven on your side than on his. {23} But here, of course, we are
sitting idle; and one who is a sluggard himself cannot require his
friends to help him, much less the gods. It is not to be wondered at
that Philip, who goes on campaigns and works hard himself, and is
always at the scene of action, and lets no opportunity go, no season
pass, should get the better of us who delay and pass resolutions and
ask for news; nor do I wonder at it. It is the opposite that would have
been wonderful--if we, who do nothing that those who are at war ought
to do, were successful against one who leaves nothing undone. {24} But
this I do wonder at, that you who once raised your hand against Sparta,
in defence of the rights of the Hellenes--you, who with opportunities
often open to you for grasping large advantages for yourselves, would
not take them, but to secure for others their rights spent your own
fortunes in war-contributions, and always bore the brunt of the dangers
of the campaign--that you, I say, are now shrinking from marching, and
hesitating to make any contribution to save your own possessions; and
that, though you have often saved the rest of the Hellenes, now all
together and now each in their turn, you are sitting idle, when you
have lost what was your own. {25} I wonder at this; and I wonder also,
men of Athens, that none of you is able to reckon up the time during
which you have been fighting with Philip, and to consider what you have
been doing while all this time has been going by. Surely you must know
that it is while we have been delaying, hoping that some one else would
act, accusing one another, bringing one another to trial, hoping
anew--in fact, doing practically what we are doing now--that all the
time has passed. {26} And have you now so little sense, men of Athens,
as to hope that the very same policy, which has made the position of
the city a bad one instead of a good, will actually make it a good one
instead of a bad? Why, it is contrary both to reason and to nature to
think so! It is always much easier to retain than to acquire. But now,
owing to the war, none of our old possessions is left for us to retain;
and so we must needs acquire. {27} This, therefore, is our own personal
and immediate duty; and accordingly I say that you must contribute
funds, you must go on service in person with a good will, you must
accuse no one before you have become masters of the situation; and then
you must honour those who deserve praise, and punish the guilty, with a
judgement based upon the actual facts. You must get rid of all excuses
and all deficiencies on your own part; you cannot examine mercilessly
the actions of others, unless you yourselves have done all that your
duty requires. {28} For why is it, do you think, men of Athens, that
all the generals whom you dispatch avoid this war,[n] and discover
private wars of their own--if a little of the truth must be told even
about the generals? It is because in this war the prizes for which the
war is waged are yours, and if they are captured, you will take them
immediately for your own; but the dangers are the personal privilege of
your commanders, and no pay is forthcoming: while in those wars the
dangers are less, and the profits--Lampsacus, Sigeum, and the ships
which they plunder--go to the commanders and their men. Each force
therefore takes the road that leads to its own advantage. {29} For your
part, when you turn your attention to the serious condition of your
affairs, you first bring the commanders to trial; and then, when you
have given them a hearing, and have been told of the difficulties which
I have described, you acquit them. The result, therefore, is that while
you are quarrelling with one another and broken into factions-one party
persuaded of this, another of that--the public interest suffers. You
used, men of Athens, to pay taxes by Boards:[n] to-day you conduct your
politics by Boards. On either side there is an orator as leader, and a
general under him; and for the Three Hundred, there are those who come
to shout. The rest of you distribute yourselves between the two
parties, some on either side. {30} This system you must give up: you
must even now become your own masters; you must give to all alike their
share in discussion, in speech and in action. If you assign to one body
of men the function of issuing orders to you, like tyrants; to another,
that of compulsory service as trierarchs or tax-payers or soldiers; and
to another, only that of voting their condemnation, without taking any
share in the labour, nothing that ought to be done will be done in
time. For the injured section will always be in default, and you will
only have the privilege of punishing them instead of the enemy. {31} To
sum up, all must contribute, each according to his wealth, in a fair
proportion: all must go on active service in turn, until you have all
served: you must give a hearing to all who come forward, and choose the
best course out of all that you hear--not the course proposed by this
or that particular person. If you do this, you will not only commend
the proposer of that course at the time, but you will commend
yourselves hereafter, for the whole position of your affairs will be a
better one.