| Demosthenes, Speeches (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose; rhetoric] [word count] [lemma count] [Dem.]. | ||
| <<Dem. 11.10 | Dem. 11.23 (Greek) | >>Dem. 12.1 |
11.18Philip's resources include mercenary soldiers, and also, observe! certain mercenary orators here among us, men who are not ashamed to devote their lives to his service, thinking that they are carrying home his bribes, but blind to the fact that they are bartering all the interests of the State, and their own as well, for a paltry profit. We, on the other hand, make no attempt to foment a revolution in his kingdom, we decline to hire mercenaries, we shrink from taking the field.
11.19It is not a strange thing, then, that he has gained ground at our expense in the late war, but rather that we, performing no single duty of a nation at war, think that we are going to defeat one who does everything that a grasping ambition demands.
Athens will suffice to restore and advance it, nor suppose that, if you are as half-hearted as before, others will be zealous in defence of your interests. Reflect, rather, what a disgrace it would be if your fathers faced many hardships and great dangers in fighting the Lacedaemonians,
11.22but you should refuse to defend with vigor those advantages which they justly won and bequeathed to you; what a disgrace if one, with only the tradition of Macedonia behind him, so cheerfully courts danger that, in the task of extending his sway, he has been wounded in every limb on the battle-field, but Athenians, whose ancestral boast it is in war to yield to none and conquer all, should renounce, through indolence or cowardice, alike the deeds of their ancestors and the interests of their fatherland.
11.20Bearing this in mind, Athenians, and reflecting that it is not even in our power to pretend that we are at peace, for Philip has already issued a declaration of war and followed it up by active hostilities, it is necessary to spare no expense, public or private, to take the field eagerly and in full force, wherever the opportunity occurs, and to employ abler generals than before. 11.21For none of you must assume that the same policy that weakened the power of
11.23Not to detain you longer, I say that we must be prepared for war, and must urge the Greek states, by our action rather than by our appeals, to join our alliance; for all words divorced from action are futile, especially words from Athenian lips, in proportion as we are reputed to be more ready of speech than all other Greeks.
| Demosthenes, Speeches (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose; rhetoric] [word count] [lemma count] [Dem.]. | ||
| <<Dem. 11.10 | Dem. 11.23 (Greek) | >>Dem. 12.1 |
