Demosthenes, Speeches (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose; rhetoric] [word count] [lemma count] [Dem.]. | ||
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16.1Both sides seem to be in error, men of
16.4Now no one would deny that our city is benefited by the weakness of the Lacedaemonians and of the Thebans yonder. note The position of affairs, then, if one may judge from statements repeatedly made in your Assembly, is such that the Thebans will be weakened by the refounding of
16.6But perhaps we shall admit that that is how matters ought to stand, but feel that it is monstrous to choose as our allies the men whose ranks we faced at
16.11Now my opponents argue that the recovery of Oropus is something that we ought to attempt, but that if we make enemies of those who would have helped us to recover it, we shall have no allies. I too think that we ought to recover Oropus, but to say that the Lacedaemonians will be our enemies as soon as we make allies of those Arcadians who are willing to be our friends—I think the only men who have no right even to suggest that are the men who persuaded you to help the Lacedaemonians in their hour of danger. 16.12For when all the Peloponnesians came to you and called on you to lead them against the Lacedaemonians, it was not by such arguments that these men persuaded you not to receive them—(and that was why they took the only remaining course of applying to the Thebans)—but to contribute funds and risk your lives for the safety of the Lacedaemonians. Yet you would surely never have consented to save them, if they had announced to you that when saved they would owe you no thanks for your help, unless you allowed them as before to commit whatever act of injustice they chose. 16.13Moreover, even if our alliance with the Arcadians is a serious impediment to the designs of the Lacedaemonians, yet surely they ought to be more grateful for the safety that we won for them, when they were in the gravest peril, than angry because of the wrongs that they are now prevented from committing. How, then, can they refuse to help us at Oropus without proving themselves the basest of mankind? By heavens! I see no escape for them.
16.14Then there is another argument that astonishes me; that if we make an alliance with the Arcadians and act upon it, our city will seem to be changing its policy and breaking faith. For to me, men of
16.16The policy of the Lacedaemonians seems to me to be very sharp practice. For they now say that
16.19But further, with regard to any acts which they say the Megalopolitans have committed for the sake of the Thebans somewhat against your interests, it is ridiculous to make these now the count of an indictment, but when they want to become friends and make you some reparation, to look askance at them and devise means of preventing this, and not to realize that the more zealous they show themselves to have been in the cause of the Thebans, the more justly would these very speakers incur your anger, if they deprived the city of such useful allies, when they came to you before applying to
16.23I should like to ask those speakers who profess hatred of the Thebans and of the Lacedaemonians, whether they hate them in either case for your sake and in your interests, or whether they hate the Thebans for the sake of the Lacedaemonians and the Lacedaemonians for the sake of the Thebans respectively. If the latter, you must not take the advice of either party, because they are both mad; but if they allege your interests, why do they unduly forward the interests of those other states? 16.24For it is surely possible to humble the Thebans without strengthening the Lacedaemonians; nay, it is much easier. How it can be done, I will try to explain.
Everyone knows this much, that all men, even against their wishes, are, up to a certain point, ashamed not to do what is just, but make a display of opposition to injustice, especially in cases where there are definite victims; and we shall find that what ruins everything—the root in fact of all evil—is unwillingness to act justly under all circumstances.
16.25In order, then, that this unwillingness may not stand in the way of the weakening of16.27Now those who seem to argue most fairly demand of the Megalopolitans that they shall destroy the pillars note that record their treaty with the Thebans, if they are to be our trusted allies. But they reply that with them friendship is based, not on inscribed pillars, but on mutual advantage, and they count as their allies those who are their helpers. But, granting the fairness of these speakers, my own view is this. I say that we must at the same time call upon them to destroy the pillars and upon the Lacedaemonians to keep the peace. If they refuse—whichever of the two it may be—then at once we side with those who consent. 16.28If the Megalopolitans, though peace is secured for them, still cling to the Theban alliance, it will of course be obvious to all that they prefer the ambition of
16.30Then again I think that you must bear this in mind, that if you reject the Megalopolitans and they are overthrown and decentralized, note the Lacedaemonians can at once be a great power, or if they do escape destruction—for such miracles have happened before now—they are bound to be the staunch friends of
16.32Men of
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