HKB
do so for others: but if, in your judgment, I talk nonsense and absurdity, you may treat me as crazed, and not listen to me, either now or in future.
That Philip from a mean and humble origin has grown mighty, that the Greeks are jealous and quarreling among themselves, that it was far more wonderful for him to rise from that insignificance, than it would now be, after so many acquisitions, to conquer what is left; these and similar matters, which I might dwell upon, I pass over. But I observe that all people, beginning with you, have conceded to him a right, which in former times has been the subject of contest in every Grecian war. And what is this? The right of doing what he pleases, openly fleecing and pillaging the Greeks, one after another, attacking and enslaving their cities. You were at the head of the Greeks for seventy-three years, [Footnote: This would be from about the end of the Persian war to the end of the Peloponnesian, B. C. 405. Isocrates speaks of the Athenian sway as having lasted sixty-five or seventy years. But statements of this kind are hardly intended to be made with perfect accuracy. In the third Olynthiac, as we have seen, Demosthenes says, the Athenians had the leadership by consent of the Greeks for forty-five years. This would exclude the Peloponnesian war.] the Lacedaemonians for twenty-nine; [Footnote: From the end of the Peloponnesian war to the battle of Naxos, B. C. 376.] and the Thebans had some power in these latter times after the battle of Leuctra. Yet neither you, my countrymen, nor Thebans nor Lacedaemonians, were ever licensed by the Greeks to act as you pleased; far otherwise. When you, or rather the Athenians at that time, appeared to be dealing harshly with certain people, all the rest, even such as had no complaint against Athens, thought proper to side with the injured parties in a war against her. So, when the Lacedaemonians became masters and succeeded to your empire, on their attempting to encroach and make oppressive innovations, [Footnote: The Spartans, whose severe military discipline rendered them far the best soldiers in Greece, were totally unfit to manage the empire, at the head of which they found themselves after the humiliation of Athens. Their attempt to force an oligarchy upon every dependent state was an unwise policy, which made them generally odious. The decemvirates of Lysander, and the governors ([Greek: armostai]) established in various Greek cities to maintain Lacedaemonian influence, were regarded as instruments of tyranny. It was found that Spartan governors and generals, when away from home, gave loose to their vicious inclinations, as if to indemnify themselves for the strictness of domestic discipline. It became a maxim in their politics, that the end justified the means. The most flagrant proof was given by the seizure of the Cadmea at Thebes; a measure, which led to a formidable confederacy against Sparta, and brought her to the verge of destruction.] a general war was declared against them, even by such as had no cause of complaint. But wherefore mention other people? We ourselves and the Lacedaemonians, although at the outset we could not allege any natural injuries, thought proper to make war for the injustice that we saw done to our neighbors. Yet all the faults committed by the Spartans in those thirty years, and by our ancestors in the seventy, are less, men of Athens, than the wrongs which, in thirteen incomplete years that Philip has been uppermost, [Footnote: I. e. in power; but, as Smead, an American editor, truly observes, [Greek: epipolyxei] has a contemptuous signification, Jacobs: oben schwimmt. The thirteen years are reckoned from the time when Philip's interference in Thessaly began; before which he had not assumed an important character in southern Greece.] he has inflicted on the Greeks: nay they are scarcely a fraction of these, as may easily be shown in a few words. Olynthus and Methone and Apollonia, and thirty-two cities [Footnote: The Chalcidian cities.] on the borders of Thrace, I pass over; all which he has so cruelly destroyed, that a visitor could hardly tell if they were ever inhabited: and of the Phocians, so considerable a people exterminated, I say nothing. But what is the condition of Thessaly? Has he not taken away her constitutions and her cities, and established tetrarchies, to parcel her out, [Footnote: This statement does not disagree with the mention of the [Greek: dekadarchia] in the second Philippic. Supposing that Thessaly was not only divided into tetrarchics, four provinces or cantons, but also governed by decemvirates of Philip's appointment, placed in divers of her cities, then by the former contrivance she might be said [Greek: donlenein kat ethnae], by the latter [Greek: kata poleis]. It is not clear indeed whether several decemvirates, or one for the whole country, is to be understood. The singular number is equally capable of either interpretation.] not only by cities, but also by provinces, for subjection? Are not the Euboean states governed now by despots, and that in an island near to Thebes and Athens? Does he not expressly write in his epistles, "I am at peace with those who are willing to obey me?" Nor does he write so and not act accordingly. He is gone to the Hellespont; he marched formerly against Ambracia; Elis, such an important city in Peloponnesus, he possesses; [Footnote: That is to say; a Macedonian faction prevailed in Elis. The democratical party had some time before endeavored to regain the ascendency, by aid of the Phocian mercenaries of Phalaecus; but they had been defeated by the troops of Arcadia and Elis.] he plotted lately to get Megara: neither Hellenic nor Barbaric land contains the man's ambition. [Footnote: So Juvenal, Sat X. 160: