II.—Beware the Guile of Philip
Nothing, men of Athens, is done as a sequel to the speeches which are delivered and approved concerning the outrageous proceedings of Philip. You are earnest in discussion; he is earnest in action. If we are to be complacently content because we employ the better arguments, well and good; but if we are successfully to resist this formidable and increasing power, we must be prepared to entertain advice that is salutary, however unpalatable, rather than counsel which is easy and pleasant.
If you give me any credit for clear perception, I beg you to attend to what I plead. After subduing Thermopylæ and the Phocians, Philip quickly apprehended that you could not be induced by any selfish considerations to abandon other Greek states to him. The Thebans, Messenians, and Argives he lured by bribes. But he knew how, in the past, your predecessors scorned the overtures of his ancestor, Alexander of Macedon, sent by Mardonius the Persian to induce the Athenians to betray the rest of the Greeks. It was not so with the Argives and the Thebans, and thus Philip calculates that their successors will care nothing for the interests of the Greeks generally. So he favours them, but not you.
Everything demonstrates Philip's animosity against Athens. He is instinctively aware that you are conscious of his plots against you, and ascribes to you a feeling of hatred against him. Eager to be beforehand with us, he continues to negotiate with Thebans and Peloponnesians, assuming that they may be beguiled with ease.
I call to mind how I addressed the Messenians and the Argives, reminding them how Philip had dishonourably given certain of their territories to the Olynthians. Would the Olynthians then have listened to any disparagements of Philip? Assuredly not. Yet they were soon shamefully betrayed and cheated by him. It is unsafe for commonwealths to place confidence in despots. In like manner were the Thessalians deceived when he had ejected their tyrants and had restored to them Nicasa and Magnesia, for he instituted the new tyranny of the Decemvirate. Philip is equally ready with gifts and promises on the one hand, and with fraud and deceit on the other.
"By Jupiter," said I to those auditors, "the only infallible defence of democracies against despots is the absolute refusal of all confidence in them. Always to mistrust them is the only safeguard. What is it that you seek to secure? Liberty? Then do you not perceive that the very titles worn by Philip prove him to be adverse to this? For every king and tyrant is an enemy to freedom and an opponent to laws."
But though my speeches and those of other emissaries were received with vociferous applause, all the same those who thus manifested profound approbation will never be able to resist the blandishments and overtures of Philip. It may well be so with those other Greeks. But you, O Athenians, surely should understand your own interests better. For otherwise irreparable disaster must ensue.
In justice, men of Athens, you should summon the men who communicated to you the promises which induced you to consent to peace. Their statements misled us; otherwise, neither would I have gone as ambassador, nor would you have ceased hostilities. Also, you should call those who, after my return from my second embassy, contradicted my report. I then protested against the abandonment of Thermopylæ and of the Phocians.
They ridiculed me as a water-drinker, and they persuaded you that Philip would cede to you Oropus and Eubœa in exchange for Amphipolis, and also that he would humble the Thebans and at his own charges cut through the Chersonese. Your anger will be excited in due time when you realise what you have hitherto disregarded, namely, that these projects on the part of Philip are devised against Athens.
Though all know it only too well, let me remind you who it was, even Æschines himself, who induced you by his persuasion to abandon Thermopylæ and Phocis. By possessing control over these, Philip now commands also the road to Attica and Peloponnesus.