Demosthenes, Speeches (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose; rhetoric] [word count] [lemma count] [Dem.]. | ||
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17.17Therefore if we are to keep this joint agreement, as these speakers say, the states that are guilty of these offences are excluded from our treaty. If, indeed, we ought to hush the matter up, we must never say that they are the Macedonian states note; but if the men who are subservient to the Macedonian king against your interests never cease urging us to carry out the joint agreement, let us take them at their word, since their contention is just, and let us, as our oath demands, exclude the guilty parties from the treaty, and form a plan for dealing with men whose temper is so brutally dictatorial, and who are constantly either plotting or acting against us and mocking at the general peace.
17.18What, I ask you, can they urge against the correctness of this view? Will they claim that the agreement stands good as against our city, but demur to it where it protects our interests? Does it really seem fair that this should be so? And if there is anything in the treaty that favors our enemies against our city, will they always make the most of it, but if there is anything that tells the other way and is at once just and advantageous to us, will they think that unremitting opposition is their peculiar duty?
Athens , you have most distinctly seen this done by the Macedonians; for they have grown so arrogant that they forced all our ships coming from the Black Sea to put in at Tenedos , and under one pretence or another refused to release them until you passed a decree to man and launch a hundred war-galleys instantly, and you put Menestheus in command.
17.21Is it not, then, absurd that others should be guilty of so many serious transgressions, but that their friends in Athens , instead of restraining the transgressors, should urge us to abide by the terms thus lightly regarded? As if there were a clause added, permitting some to violate them, but forbidding others even to defend their rights!
17.22But was not the conduct of the Macedonians as stupid as it was lawless, when they committed such a gross violation of their oaths as deservedly went near to cost them their right to command at sea? note Even as it is, they have supplied us with this unquestionable claim against them, whenever we choose to press it. For surely their violation of the joint agreement is not lessened because they have now ceased to offend.
17.23But they are in luck, because they can make the most of your supineness, which prefers to take no advantage even of your due rights.
Piraeus , contrary to our mutual agreement. Moreover, men of Athens , because it was only a single war-galley, it must not be regarded as a slight matter, but as an experiment made to see whether we should overlook it, so that they could repeat it on a larger scale, and also as a proof that they cared as little for these terms of agreement as for those that have been already mentioned.
17.19But to prove to you still more clearly that no Greeks will accuse you of transgressing any of the terms of the joint agreement, but will even be grateful to you for exposing the real transgressors, I will just touch upon a few of the many points that might be mentioned. For the compact, of course, provides that all the parties to the peace may sail the seas, and that none may hinder them or force a ship of any of them to come to harbor, note and that anyone who violates this shall be treated as an enemy by all the parties to the peace. 17.20Now, men of
The greatest humiliation, however, that we have suffered is that all the other Greeks and barbarians dread your enmity, but these upstarts note alone can make you despise yourselves, sometimes by persuasion, sometimes by force, as if
17.26Such then, in the matter of the ships, has been the violation of the compact by the Macedonian king, in addition to the other cases mentioned. But the most insolent and overbearing exploit of the Macedonians was that performed quite recently, when they dared to sail into the
Demosthenes, Speeches (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose; rhetoric] [word count] [lemma count] [Dem.]. | ||
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