HKB
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.