The Public Orations of Demosthenes, vol 2 | Page 6

though the man has been away for ten
months, {36} and has been cut off from every possibility of returning
home, by illness 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