Greek Texts & Translations

1.18There is bitterness in the voice of truth, when the speaker with simple frankness takes away the expectation of great successes: while pleasant words, though they are false, convince those who hear them.

1.19The danger was expected to reach Attica.

1.20In a short time the Macedonian spearheads had already closed on Attica, and now that the catastrophe was on our borders and Greece was cowering we had need to soothe and tame the anger of the king, which had been roused against our people.

1.21It is not the giving of the bribe that distresses us but the action of the man who takes it, if it is directed against our interests.

1.22With these words he raises the firebrand of war and the enemy encamps at the gates.

1.23He decided the war with bloodshed.

1.24My purpose is not to get gold, as these men falsely allege; it is this.

1.25. . . had suspicion as an ally.

1.26If only the Thebans had possessed a Demades; for Thebes would then be still a city. Now it is but the site of a city, a remnant of catastrophe, razed to its foundations by enemy hands.

1.27It was not honorable to admit enemy blood and Macedonian fire into Attica nor to be silent and endure the sight of the city sinking like a ship.

1.28But the cowardly politicians, leading out the flower of the city to Boeotia, led them to a graveyard.

1.29It is with peace, not argument, that we must counter the Macedonian phalanx; for argument lacks power to take effect when urged by men whose strength is less than their desire.

1.30The anger of those who have been wronged is appeased whenever he who is to blame refrains from contentiousness and lets the party wronged judge for himself the kindness he will show.

1.31They entombed the envoys in a well, ^note noble in so far as they stood by their resolution, but impious in the execution of the punishment.

1.32Sparta was worn out with difficulties.

1.33Demosthenes, bitter sycophant that he is, by the cleverness of his words distorted the fact and showed it in a bad light.

1.34They came to realize clearly the changeability of the politician's life, the uncertainty of the future, the variety of fortune's changes, and the difficulty of gauging the crises that hold Greece in their grip. Therefore the law which they intended to direct against others . . .

1.35It was not I that advised this course: my country, the occasion, the circumstances themselves, thought fit to use my voice to put the measures into effect. It Is unjust therefore that an adviser should be held accountable for circumstances and for events whose outcome rested with fortune.

1.36Killed by his own hand he departed this life.

1.37The daughters of Erechtheus, ^note by nobility of virtue, triumphed over the woman's weakness in their hearts the frailty of their nature was made virile by devotion to the soil that reared them.

1.38Old men shrink from death in the sunset of life.

1.39. . . lit up Greece with the fire of war.