HKB
detail, both in its military and in its financial aspects, and supported with an eloquence and an earnestness which are far in advance of those displayed in the earlier speeches.
The statement of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, that the Speech as we have it, is really a conflation of two speeches, of which the second (beginning at § 30) was delivered in 347, is generally (and rightly) discredited.]
{1} If some new subject were being brought before us, men of Athens, I would have waited until most of your ordinary advisers had declared their opinion; and if anything that they said were satisfactory to me, I would have remained silent, and only if it were not so, would I have attempted to express my own view. But since we find ourselves once more considering a question upon which they have often spoken, I think I may reasonably be pardoned for rising first of all. For if their advice to you in the past had been what it ought to have been, you would have had no occasion for the present debate.