Greek Texts & Translations

Accordingly after a short time they obtained assistance, and once more inhabited their country in security. For the compassion of foreigners is no small benefit to those who are unjustly dispossessed; since we often see that, with the change of feeling among the many, Fortune also changes; and even the conquerors themselves repent, and make

good the disasters of those who have fallen under undeserved misfortunes. ^note Once more, at certain periods the Chalcidians and Corinthians and some other cities, owing to the advantages of their situation, were attacked by the kings of Macedonia, and had garrisons imposed on them: but when they were thus enslaved all the world were eager to do their best to liberate them, and loathed their enslavers and regarded them continually as their enemies. But above all, up to this time it was generally single states that were depopulated, and in single states that reverses were met with, in some cases while disputing for supremacy and empire, and in others from the treacherous attacks of despots and kings: so that, so far from their losses bringing them any reproach, they escaped even the name of misfortune. ^note For we must look on all those who meet with incalculable disasters whether private or public as the victims of losses, and those only to be "unfortunate," to whom events through their own folly bring dishonour. Instances of this last are the Peloponnesians, Boeotians, Phocians, . . . and Locrians, some of the dwellers on the Ionian gulf, and next to these the Macedonians, . . . who all as a rule did not merely suffer loss, but were "unfortunate," with a misfortune of the gravest kind and for which they were themselves open to reproach: for they displayed at once want of good faith and want of courage, brought upon themselves a series of disgraces, lost all that could bring them honour, . . . and voluntarily admitted into their towns the Roman fasces and axes. ^note They were in the utmost panic, in fact, owing to the extravagance of their own wrongful acts, if one ought to call them their own; for I should rather say that the peoples as such were entirely ignorant, and were beguiled from the path of right: but that the men who acted wrongly were the authors of this delusion.