The Public Orations of Demosthenes, vol 2 | Page 6

and by winter and by wars, you have neither liberated Euboea nor recovered any of your own possessions? Is it true that you have remained at home, unoccupied and healthy--if such a word can be used of men who behave thus--and have seen him set up two tyrants in Euboea, one to serve as a fortress directly menacing Attica, the other to watch Sciathus; {37} and that you have not even rid yourselves of these dangers--granted that you did not want to do anything more--but have let them be? Obviously you have retired in his favour, and have made it evident that if he dies ten times over, you will not make any move the more. Why trouble us then with your embassies and your accusations?' If they speak thus to us, what will be our answer? What shall we say, Athenians? I do not see what we can say.
{38} Now there are some who imagine that they confute a speaker, as soon as they have asked him the question, 'What then are we to do?' I will first give them this answer--the most just and true of all--'Do not do what you are doing now.' {39} But at the same time I will give them a minute and detailed reply; and then let them show that their willingness to act upon it is not less than their eagerness to interrogate. First, men of Athens, you must thoroughly make up your minds to the fact that Philip is at war with Athens, and has broken the Peace--you must cease to lay the blame at one another's doors--and that he is evilly-disposed and hostile to the whole city, down to the very ground on which it is built; {40} nay, I will go further--hostile to every single man in the city, even to those who are most sure that they are winning his favour. (If you think otherwise, consider the case of Euthycrates[n] and Lasthenes of Olynthus, who fancied that they were on the most friendly terms with him, but, after they had betrayed their city, suffered the most utter ruin of all.) But his hostilities and intrigues are aimed at nothing so much as at our constitution, whose overthrow is the very first object in the world to him. {41} And in a sense it is natural that he should aim at this. For he knows very well that even if he becomes master of all the rest of the world, he can retain nothing securely, so long as you are a democracy; and that if he chances to stumble anywhere, as may often happen to a man, all the elements which are now forced into union with him will come and take refuge with you. {42} For though you are not yourselves naturally adapted for aggrandizement or the usurpation of empire, you have the art of preventing any other from seizing power and of taking it from him when he has it; and in every respect you are ready to give trouble to those who are ambitious of dominion, and to lead all men forth into liberty. And so he would not have Freedom, from her home in Athens, watching for every opportunity he may offer--far from it--and there is nothing unsound or careless in his reasoning. {43} The first essential point, therefore, is this--that you conceive him to be the irreconcilable foe of your constitution and of democracy: for unless you are inwardly convinced of this, you will not be willing to take an active interest in the situation. Secondly, you must realize clearly that all the plans which he is now so busily contriving are in the nature of preparations against this country; and wherever any one resists him, he there resists him on our behalf. {44} For surely no one is so simple as to imagine that when Philip is covetous of the wretched hamlets[n] of Thrace--one can give no other name to Drongilum, Cabyle, Masteira, and the places which he is now seizing--and when to get these places he is enduring heavy labours, hard winters, and the extremity of danger;--{45} no one can imagine, I say, that the harbours and the dockyards, and the ships of the Athenians, the produce of your silver-mines, and your huge revenue, have no attraction for him, or that he will leave you in possession of these, while he winters in the very pit of destruction[n] for the sake of the millet and the spelt in the silos[n] of Thrace. No, indeed! It is to get these into his power that he pursues both his operations in Thrace and all his other designs. {46} What then, as sensible men, must you do? Knowing and realizing your position, as you do, you must lay aside this excessive, this irremediable[n] indolence: you