The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1

by Demosthenes

{24} 'Are we then, for fear of this, to submit to Philip? and do you require this of us?' you ask me. Far from it. Our action must be such as will be in no way unworthy of us, and at the same time will not lead to war, but will prove to all our good sense and the justice of our position: and, in answer to those who are bold enough to think that we should refuse to submit to anything whatever,[n] [2] and who cannot foresee the war that must follow, I wish to urge this consideration. We are allowing the Thebans to hold Oropus; and if any one asked us to state the reason honestly, we should say that it was to avoid war. {25} Again, we have just ceded Amphipolis to Philip by the Treaty of Peace;[n] we permit the Cardians[n] to occupy a position apart from the other colonists in the Chersonese; we allow the Prince of Caria[n] to seize the islands of Chios, Cos, and Rhodes, and the Byzantines to drive our vessels to shore[n]—obviously because we believe that the tranquillity afforded by peace brings more blessings than any collision or contention over these grievances would bring: so that it would be a foolish and an utterly perverse policy, when we have behaved in this manner towards each of our adversaries individually, where our own most essential interests were concerned, to go now to war with all of them together, on account of this shadow at Delphi.[n]

FOOTNOTES

[1] The term 'the allies of Athens' was ambiguous. It might be taken (as it was taken by Philip and his envoys) to include only the remaining members of the League (see p. 9), who were represented by the Synod then sitting, and whose policy Athens could control. But it was evidently possible to put a wider interpretation upon it, as the Assembly probably did and as Demosthenes often does (e.g. Speech on Embassy, § 278), and to understand it as including the Phocians and others (such as Cersobleptes) with whom Athens had a treaty of alliance. Much of the trouble which followed arose out of this ambiguity.

[2] [Greek: oud hotioun].

THE SECOND PHILIPPIC (OR. VI)

[Introduction. After settling affairs at Delphi in 346, Philip returned to Macedonia. During a considerable part of 345 and in the early months of 344 he was occupied with campaigns against the Illyrians, Dardani, and Triballi. But in the summer (probably) of 344 he resumed his activities in Greece, garrisoning Pherae and other towns of Thessaly with Macedonians, appropriating the revenues derived from the Thessalian ports, and establishing oligarchical governments throughout the country. At the same time negotiations were going on between himself and Athens with regard to the Thracian strongholds which he had captured in 346. He refused to give these up, though he offered to cut a canal across the Chersonese, for the protection of the Athenian allies there from the attacks of the Thracians. He also sent money and mercenaries to help the Messenians and Argives, who, like the Megalopolitans, were anxious to secure their independence of Sparta. Athens, which was on friendly terms with Sparta, sent envoys to the Peloponnesian states to counteract Philip's influence, and of these Demosthenes was one. In return, Argos and Messene complained to Athens of her interference with their attempt to secure freedom, and Philip sent envoys to deprecate the charges made against him by the Athenian ambassadors in the Peloponnese. He pointed out that he had not broken any promises made to Athens at the time of the Peace, for he had made none. (In fact, if Demosthenes' account is correct, he had confined himself to vague expressions of goodwill; the promises had been made by Aeschines.) The Second Philippic, spoken late in 344, proposes a reply to Philip, the text of which has unfortunately not come down to us. The Peloponnesian envoys appear also to have been in Athens at the time; and Philip's supporters had put forward various explanations of his conduct at the time when the Peace was made. To these also Demosthenes replies.]

{1} In all our discussions, men of Athens, with regard to the acts of violence by which Philip contravenes the terms of the Peace, I observe that, although the speeches on our side are always manifestly just and sympathetic,[n] and although those who denounce Philip are always regarded as saying what ought to be said, yet practically nothing is done which ought to be done, or which would make it worth while to listen to such speeches. {2} On the contrary, the condition of public affairs as a whole has already been brought to a point at which, the more and the more evidently a speaker can convict Philip both of transgressing the Peace which he made with you and of plotting against all the Hellenes, the harder it is for him to advise you how you should act. {3} The responsibility for this rests with us all, men of Athens. It is by deeds and actions, not by words, that a policy of encroachment must be arrested: and yet, in the first place, we who rise to address you will not face the duty of proposing or advising such action, for fear of unpopularity with you, though we dilate upon the character of Philip's acts, upon their atrocity, and so forth; and, in the second place, you who sit and listen, better qualified though you doubtless are than Philip for using the language of justice and appreciating it at the mouths of others, are nevertheless absolutely inert, when it is a question of preventing him from executing the designs in which he is now engaged. {4} It follows as the inevitable and perhaps reasonable consequence, that you are each more successful in that to which your time and your interest is given—he in actions, yourselves in words. Now if it is still enough for you, that your words are more just than his, your course is easy, and no labour is involved in it. {5} But if we are to inquire how the evil of the present situation is to be corrected; if its advance is not still to continue, unperceived, until we are confronted by a power so great that we cannot even raise a hand in our own defence; then we must alter our method of deliberation, and all of us who speak, and all of you who listen, must resolve to prefer the counsels which are best, and which can save us, to those which are most easy and most attractive.

{6} I am amazed, men of Athens, in the first place, that any one who sees the present greatness of Philip and the wide mastery which he has gained, can be free from alarm, or can imagine that this involves no peril to Athens, or that it is not against you that all his preparations are being made. And I would beg you, one and all, to listen while I put before you in a few words the reasoning by which I have come to entertain the opposite expectation, and the grounds upon which I regard Philip as an enemy; that so, if my own foresight appears to you the truer, you may believe me; but if that of the persons who have no fears and have placed their trust in him, you may give your adhesion to them. {7} Here then, men of Athens, is my argument. Of what, in the first place, did Philip become master, when the Peace was concluded? Of Thermopylae, and of the situation in Phocis. Next, what use did he make of his power? He deliberately chose to act in the interests of Thebes, not in those of Athens. And why? He scrutinized every consideration in the light of his own ambition and of his desire for universal conquest: he took no thought for peace, or tranquillity, or justice; {8} and he saw quite correctly that our state and our national character being what they are, there was no attraction that he could offer, nothing that he could do, which would induce you to sacrifice any of the other Hellenes to him for your own advantage. He saw that you would take account of what was right; that you would shrink from the infamy attaching to such a policy; that you would exercise all the foresight which the situation demanded, and would oppose any such attempt on his part, as surely as if you were at open war with him. {9} But the Thebans, he believed—and the event proved that he was right—in return for what they were getting would let him do as he pleased in all that did not concern them; and far from acting against him, or preventing him effectively, would even join him in his campaign, if he bade them. His services to the Messenians and the Argives at the present moment are due to his having formed the same conception of them. And this, men of Athens, is the highest of all tributes to yourselves: {10} for these actions of his amount to a verdict upon you, that you alone of all peoples would never, for any gain to yourselves, sacrifice the common rights of the Hellenes, nor barter away your loyalty to them for any favour or benefit at his hands. This conception of you he has naturally formed, just as he has formed the opposite conception of the Argives and the Thebans, not only from his observation of the present, but also from his consideration of the past. {11} He discovers, I imagine, and is told, how when your forefathers might have been rulers of the rest of the Hellenes, on condition of submitting to the king themselves, they not only refused to tolerate the suggestion, on the occasion when Alexander [n], the ancestor of the present royal house, came as his herald to negotiate, but chose rather to leave their country and to face any suffering which they might have to endure; and how they followed up the refusal by those deeds which all are so eager to tell, but to which no one has ever been able to do justice; and for that reason, I shall myself forbear to speak of them, and rightly; for the grandeur of their achievements passes the power of language to describe. He knows, on the other hand, how the forefathers of the Thebans and Argives, in the one case, joined the barbarian army, in the other, offered no resistance to it. {12} He knows, therefore, that both these peoples will welcome what is to their own advantage, instead of considering the common interests of the Hellenes: and so he thought that, if he chose you for his allies, he would be choosing friends who would only serve a righteous cause; while if he joined himself to them, he would win accomplices who would further his own ambitions. That is why he chose them, as he chooses them now, in preference to you. For he certainly does not see them in possession of more ships than you; nor has he discovered some inland empire, and withdrawn from the seaboard and the trading-ports; nor does he forget the words and the promises, on the strength of which he was granted the Peace.

{13} But some one may tell us, with an air of complete knowledge of the matter, that what then moved Philip to act thus was not his ambition nor any of the motives which I impute to him, but his belief that the demands of Thebes were more righteous than your own. I reply, that this statement, above all others, is one which he cannot possibly make now. How can one who is ordering Sparta to give up Messene put forward his belief in the righteousness of the act, as his excuse for handing over Orchomenus and Coroneia to Thebes?

{14} 'But,' we are told (as the last remaining plea), 'he was forced to make these concessions, and did so against his better judgement, finding himself caught between the cavalry of Thessaly and the infantry of Thebes.' Admirable! And so, we are informed, he intends henceforth to be wary of the Thebans, and the tale goes round that he intends to fortify Elateia [n]. 'Intends,' indeed! and I expect that it will remain an intention! {15} But the help which he is giving to the Messenians and Argives is no 'intention'; for he is actually sending mercenaries to them and dispatching funds, and is himself expected to arrive on the spot with a great force. Is he trying to annihilate the Spartans, the existing enemies of Thebes, and at the same time protecting the Phocians, whom he himself has ruined? Who will believe such a tale? {16} For if Philip had really acted against his will and under compulsion in the first instance—if he were now really intending to renounce the Thebans—I cannot believe that he would be so consistently opposing their enemies. On the contrary, his present course plainly proves that his former action also was the result of deliberate policy; and to any sound observation, it is plain that the whole of his plans are being organized for one end—the destruction of Athens. {17} Indeed, this has now come to be, in a sense, a matter of necessity for him. Only consider. It is empire that he desires, and you, as he believes, are his only possible rivals in this. He has been acting wrongfully towards you for a long time, as he himself best knows; for it is the occupation of your possessions that enables him to hold all his other conquests securely, convinced, as he is, that if he had let Amphipolis and Poteidaea go, he could not dwell in safety even at home. {18} These two facts, then, he well knows—first, that his designs are aimed at you, and secondly, that you are aware of it: and as he conceives you to be men of sense, he considers that you hold him in righteous detestation: and, in consequence, his energies are roused: for he expects to suffer disaster, if you get your opportunity, unless he can anticipate you by inflicting it upon you. {19} So he is wide awake; he is on the alert; he is courting the help of others against Athens—of the Thebans and those Peloponnesians who sympathize with their wishes; thinking that their desire of gain will make them embrace the immediate prospect, while their native stupidity will prevent them from foreseeing any of the consequences. Yet there are examples, plainly visible to minds which are even moderately well-balanced[n]—examples which it fell to my lot to bring before Messenian and Argive audiences, but which had better, perhaps, be laid before yourselves as well.